DUSHANBE, May 10, 2013, Asia-Plus – A new report published by the Save the Children Alliance notes that maternal and infant mortality indicators in Tajikistan are the worst among the Central Asian nations.
In Tajikistan, the infant mortality rate is 63.3 per 1,000 live births – it is the highest among the Central Asian countries. In Uzbekistan, the infant mortality rate is 48.6 per 1,000 live births, in Turkmenistan – 55.5 per 1,000 live births, in Kyrgyzstan — 30.6 per 1,000 live births, and in Kazakhstan – 28.3 per 1,000 live births.
Taking all indicators into consideration, the report ranked Tajikistan 124th among 186 countries.
Kazakhstan was ranked 65th, Kyrgyzstan 99th, Turkmenistan 104th, and Uzbekistan – 105th.
According to the new report, themed “Surviving the First Day,” every year more than 1 million babies die on the day they are born, making a baby”s birth day the most dangerous day of life. This report presents the growing evidence that the world today has the low-cost tools to prevent millions of newborn deaths once considered inevitable.”
The report includes a new Birth Day Risk Index that ranks 186 countries by the chances a baby will die on the first day of life.
In addition, the report also features Save the Children”s Mothers” Index. This year, it ranks Finland as the best place in the world to be a mother, and Democratic Republic of the Congo as the toughest.
The 2013 SOWM Report notes that an original analysis by Save the Children estimates that within the first month of life, more than 1 million babies could be saved each year with universal access to the following products: steroid injections for women in preterm labor (to reduce deaths due to premature babies’ breathing problems); resuscitation devices (to save babies who do not breathe at birth); chlorhexidine cord cleansing (to prevent umbilical cord infections); and injectable antibiotics (to treat newborn sepsis and pneumonia). These products cost between 13 cents and $6 each and are ready for rapid scale-up now.
The Save the Children State of the World”s Mothers report (SOWM report) is an annual report by the International Save the Children Alliance, which compiles statistics on the health of mothers and children and uses them to produce rankings of nations within three groupings corresponding to varying levels of economic development. The reports compile a Women”s Index and a Children”s Index for countries for which sufficient data could be collected, and a Mother”s Index where both of these could be calculated. The reports have been produced annually since the year 2000.
