As Bangladesh gets set to celebrate Mother’s Day tomorrow, the country has fared among the best in the region in the State of the World’s Mothers index. But the region as a whole has a long way to go.
The ranking, compiled by Save the Children each year, to determine which countries are the best places to be a mother put Bangladesh in at 130th place.
Although performing poorly overall, Bangladesh fared better than its neighbours; India was ranked 140th, Pakistan 149th, and Myanmar 158th.
Out of the 179 countries surveyed, Norway, Finland and Iceland were found to be the world’s best countries for mothers to raise children.
Nearly all of the bottom-ranked countries are affected by conflict, with Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic at the bottom of the ranking.
The 16th annual State of the World’s Mothers report, released last week, focused on exploring health disparities between the wealthy and the poor women and children living in cities around the world, and found that urban slums were some of the worst places in the world to be a mother.
The report said one of the key findings of the survey was that the urban poor were often as bad as, or even worse off than, the average rural family; while for many rural families, moving to the city may result in more hardship.
The ranking also found that the poorest urban mothers and children were often deprived of lifesaving health care, with huge disparities in access to prenatal care and skilled birth attendance.
According to the report, Bangladesh is among the countries which have the largest urban child survival gaps, meaning that the poor urban children in Bangladesh are three to five times as likely to die as their most affluent peers.
Dhaka is among the 22 cities that have the largest coverage gaps between the rich and the poor. In these cities, stunting rates are 29 to 39 percentage points higher among the poorest compared to the richest.
In Bangladesh and India, over half of the poor urban children are stunted, compared to 20% or less of the wealthiest children.
In case of under-five mortality rate, 41.1 children die for every 1,000 live births in Bangladesh; in last year’s ranking, the rate was 40.9.
Bangladesh also performed poorly on female education. Women in Bangladesh receive about 10 years of formal schooling, while the world average is about 12 years.