New Zealand ranked sixth best place to be a mother

File photo / Northern Advocate

New Zealand is still one of the best places in the world to be a mother, says a new report.

Save the Children's annual Mother's Day report says the average Kiwi woman will have 20 years of formal education and live to age 82, with almost all having health professionals present when they give birth.

By contrast in the worst place in the world for mothers, Afghanistan, a typical woman will have only four years of formal schooling and die by age 44, and only one in seven has a health professional present in childbirth.

But the report places Australia and four Nordic countries ahead of us on key measures such as maternal deaths in childbirth.

New Zealand's overall ranking is also dragged down by a high death rate of six out of every 1000 children before the age of 5 - the same as in Australia but roughly twice the death rates of three or four in 1000 in Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark.

The rankings are based on a weighted average of children's wellbeing and women's status in health, education, income and politics.

An Auckland obstetrician and gynaecologist who chairs an official committee on maternal and infant mortality, Professor Cindy Farquhar, said her committee found that our perinatal child death rate, between 20 weeks of pregnancy and one week after childbirth, was comparable with Australia and Britain, which was rated overall 14th-best place for mothers.

Our maternal death rate of 17 women for every 100,000 giving birth is quoted in the report as more than twice Australia's rate of 7.5 and higher than in all but 11 out of 43 developed countries.

But Professor Farquhar said these figures were based on a very small number of actual maternal deaths - just 11 at last count in 2007.

TOP 10

Places for mothers, 2009 rank in brackets:

1 Norway (2)

2 Australia (3)

3= Iceland (4)

3= Sweden (1)

5 Denmark (5)

6 New Zealand (6)

7 Finland (7)

8 Netherlands (10)

9= Belgium (17)

9= Germany (9)

Source: Save the Children.