Mother's Day Report Card: Ethiopia in Bottom 10

Save the Children, a U.S.-based independent global humanitarian organization, released today its annual Mothers' Index that ranks the best - and worst - places to be a mother and a child. The Index, highlighted in the organization's State of the World's Mothers 2005 report, ranks the status of mothers and children in 110 countries based on ten indicators pertaining to health and education. The Index reveals that where mothers survive and thrive, children survive and thrive.

Bottom 10 Countries

109. Mali; Burkina Faso - tied
108. Ethiopia
107. Chad
106. Yemen
105. Congo, Democratic Republic of the
104. Mauritania
103. Nepal
102. Gambia
100. Eritrea, Cambodia - tied

STATS

COUNTRY COMPARISONS: The Mothers' Index exposes an enormous gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring countries and underscores an urgent need to address this divide. For instance, in Sweden, which tops the list, nearly all women are literate. In contrast, in Ethiopia, only 34 percent of women are literate. And a mother in Ethiopia is 37 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life than a mother in Sweden

U.S. Newswire