Report: One in 10 bebies born to teen mothers
One in 10 babies in the world is born to a teenage mother, greatly increasing the risk of death to both mother and child, humanitarian group Save the Children said today.
An estimated 70,000 girls aged 15-19 and more than a million infants born to young mothers die each year from complications related to childbearing, the group says in an annual report.
“In developing countries, pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death among teenage girls,” Mike Kiernan, a spokesman for Save the Children, said in an interview in New York.
Some 995 of all maternal deaths occurred in developing countries, he said.
Girls in sub-Saharan Africa face the highest risk rates for young mothers, Kiernan said. Outside Africa, the risks are especially high in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Yemen, Guatemala, Haiti and Nicaragua.
The group’s annual State of the World’s Mothers report ranks the wellbeing of mothers in 119 countries, taking into account their health, education and political status.
This year’s report focused on mothers who are still children or adolescents, whose bodies often are not mature enough to handle the strains of pregnancy and childbirth.
While most of the study focused on girls in the developing world, it also reported on early motherhood in wealthy nations. Among industrialised nations, the United States has the largest number of teen pregnancies, followed by Russia and New Zealand.
The Republic of Korea has the lowest numbers of teen births, followed by Japan and the Netherlands.
The report found that education was the single biggest factor in helping girls postpone pregnancy and have healthier children.
In Nigeria, for example, research showed that only seven per cent of women with seven years of schooling gave birth before the age of 20, compared with 43% of those with no education, the report said.
“The longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to be married young, give birth young and suffer death or disability to young pregnancy,” said Mary Beth Powers, the reproductive health adviser at Save the Children.
“The longer the girl stays in school, the more likely her children are to survive.”
The report’s “Mothers’ Index”, which ranks the top 10 and the bottom 10 countries for mothers, shows a large literacy gap between the two extremes. In Sweden, ranked the best country for mothers, more than 99% of women are literate, while in Niger, ranked lowest, only 9% are.
After education, health care is key to addressing the problems of child motherhood, the report said.
It recommended tailoring health services to newly-married girls and first-time mothers, with voluntary family planning as a key component.
“Young married girls need access to contraception so they can delay first births until they are 20 when their bodies are more mature,” Powers said.
After Sweden, the best countries for mothers are: Denmark, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
After Niger, the lowest-ranking countries for mothers are: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Sierra Leone, Yemen, the Central African Republic and Mauritania.
