UK Mums Twice As Likely To Die In Childbirth Than In Poland, Austria Or Belarus

Women in the UK are twice as likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth as mums in Poland, Belarus or Austria, Save the Children has revealed in its annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

The UK was revealed to be the 24th best place in the world to become a mum – behind many other developed countries such as Greece, Spain and Norway.

Although our country fared slightly better than last year, when the UK came in 26th place, this is the third year in a row that the UK’s missed making the top 10 list.

The UK came behind Greece, Spain, Ireland and France while Norway was found to be the best country in the world to become a mum. Two other Scandinavian countries, Finland and Iceland, scored second and third place respectively while Spain came in seventh place and Germany in eighth.

UK women have a one in 6,900 lifetime risk of maternity death, which is thought to be a result of high-risk pregnancies due to obesity, IVF, social deprivation, multiple pregnancies and older mums.

The annual report uses data from UN agencies and other sources to look at five key factors in each country; the risk of death during pregnancy and birth, under-five mortality rate, educational status, economic achievement and political status.

The report also revealed that children born in the UK are twice as likely to die before they reach the age of five as in Iceland. Iceland’s child mortality rate is just 2.1 per 1,000 births while the UK’s is 4.6.

But if you think Britain looks like a bad place to welcome your child into the world, going stateside to give birth could be even worse as the US was found to have the worst maternal death rate in the developed world and was 33rd on the list.

“We urgently need to close the gap in life chances for mothers and children so that no matter where they live, everyone has a fair chance to survive and fulfill their potential,” says Jasmine Whitbread, Save the Children International’s chief executive.

Whitbread says that the increased amount of people living in cities is leaving health services unable to care for all of the pregnant women and children.

“For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas,” she says.

“People are often drawn to cities by the prospect of a better life for their children, but many cities around the world are unable to keep up with breakneck growth, leaving hundreds of millions of mothers and children in cities without access to essential health services and the clean water they need to survive and stay healthy.”

But despite the UK coming across so badly in the report, Patrick O’Brien, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says that women hoping to start families here shouldn’t worry.  

“Britain is an incredibly safe place to have a baby,” says Mr O’Brien. “The reason the figures sometimes appear higher is because we are so good at chasing up and investing every woman who has a complication and dies.

“We are never complacent and extremely thorough about learning about any problems that cause death.”

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