The 25 best countries in the world to be a mother (Britain is number 24)

Women in Britain are more than twice as likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth as those in Poland, Austria or Belarus, a report published on Tuesday has revealed.

Save the Children’s 16th annual State of the World’s Mothers report found that women in the UK face a one in 6,900 lifetime risk of maternal death. This was far greater than Poland (19,800), Austria (19,200) and Belarus (45,200). In the US the figure was a one in 1,800 lifetime risk of maternal death – the worst performance of any developed country in the world.

The UK only just made it into the list of the top 25 countries in the world to be a mother, coming in at 24th place in the charity’s 2015 Mothers’ Index.

“The ranking shows that the UK is underperforming as one of the wealthiest countries in the world,” Kathryn Bolles, director of health and nutrition for Save the Children, told i.

Researchers also calculated that a child born in the UK is more than twice as likely to die before the age of five as it is in Iceland or Luxembourg, with the UK having a child mortality rate of 4.6 per 1,000 births, and the other two countries being 2.1 and two respectively.

These are the countries that topped this year’s Mothers’ Index:

1 Norway

2 Finland

3 Iceland

4 Denmark

5 Sweden

6 Netherlands

7 Spain

8 Germany

9 Australia

10 Belgium

11 Austria

12 Italy

13 Switzerland

14 Singapore

15 Slovenia

16 Portugal

17 New Zealand

18 Israel

19 Greece

20 Canada

21 Luxembourg

22 Ireland

23 France

24 United Kingdom

= 25 Belarus

= 25 Czech Republic

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