Ireland 20th best place to be a mother

Ireland has come 20th in a list of the best places to be a mother — falling behind other European countries such as Portugal, Slovenia, and Greece.

In a list of 176 countries, Ireland comes ahead of Canada, the UK, and the US which come in at 22nd, 23rd, and 30th.

The Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers Report looks at countries that are succeeding and failing in saving the lives of mothers and their newborn babies.

It assesses mothers’ wellbeing using indicators of maternal health, under-five mortality, levels of women’s education, income, and political status.

It also found the risk of maternal death at childbirth in Ireland is one death in 8,100 compared with one in 4,600 in the UK, and one in 2,400 in the US. In Ireland, four in every 1,000 children born alive die before the age of five.

It also found that Irish mothers can expect their children to stay in formal schooling until they are on average, 18-and-a-half, and that female participation in the Dáil stood at 19% compared to 42.5% in the Finnish parliament, 39% in Denmark, and 28% in Poland.

Finland, Sweden, and Norway come out as the top three countries to be a mother. Germany is at number 9 and France is at number 16.

The Netherlands come in at number five — a recent study showed that the Netherlands is the best place in the world to be a child.

The report found the Democratic Republic of Congo to be the world’s toughest place to be a mother.

According to Save the Children, 1m babies die each year on the day they are born — or two every minute — making the first day by far the riskiest day of a person’s life in almost every country in the world.

A baby in the developing world is seven times as likely to die on its first day than a baby born in industrialised nations.

A newborn in Somalia — the most risky country to be born — is 40 times more likely to die on its first day than a child born in Luxembourg, which is the safest.

The US has the highest first-day death rate in the industrialised world. An estimated 11,300 newborns die each year in the US on the day they are born. It is believed newborn mortality in developed countries is higher among the poor and racial/ethnic minorities.

Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, said: “Overall the world has made unprecedented progress in reducing child and maternal deaths. But within this progress there are two big challenges: newborns and malnutrition.

“We can end child and maternal mortality in our generation — by using tried and tested interventions to stop mothers and babies being lost from what should be simple preventable causes.

“The G8 in June has a critical opportunity to tackle hunger which accounts for a third of child deaths. We must make sure we seize this opportunity.”