48 million women give each year birth without any professional assistance and even without having received any checkups during pregnancy.

Because of cultural reasons pregnant women in some countries give birth at home without a midwife, with only a dirty blade to cut the umbilical cord and herbs from a traditional healer to try and combat infection. Two million of these women deliver their babies completely alone – often with devastating consequences.

There is a global shortage of 350,000 midwives,16 which is part of a worldwide shortage of 3.5 million healthcare workers.

— 'Missing Midwives'-report

In Ethiopia 94% give birth with no skilled birth attendant, in Bangladesh 76%. As a result, 1,000 women and 2,000 babies die every day from birth complications which could be easily prevented. One woman every minute – die as a result of pregnancy.

One woman every minute – die as a result of pregnancy.

— 'Missing Midwives'-report

If the shortage of midwives was met, more than a million newborn babies could be saved. By comparison, only 1% of women in the UK give birth without a midwife or skilled birth attendant, with the most common cause being that the birth happens so fast that the woman cannot get to hospital in time.
It’s estimated that if the shortage of midwives was met and all births occurred in the presence of midwives or health workers with similar experience, every year the lives of 1.3 million children and tens of thousands of women could be saved, instead of dying from easily preventable problems.

Every year more than 2 million women give birth completely alone.

— Save The Children

How many children dies each year?
•2 million the day of birth
•3 million within a week
•4 million within 28 days after birth
•8,1 million children die before reaching the age of 5

The three biggest killers of newborn babies in the first month are:
• complications arising from prematurity, eg, breathing difficulties due to underdeveloped lungs, or feeding difficulties due to an under-developed digestive system (28%)
• asphyxia, when a baby is deprived of oxygen during delivery and is more likely to need resuscitation when it is born (23%)
• sepsis, an infection of the blood (15%).

2011 Mothers’ Index Rankings
Read the “Missing Midwives”-report (PDF from Save The Children)
The distance between the first on the list, Norway, and the last country on the list, Afghanistan, is abysmal: in Norway every birth occurs in the presence of qualified personnel while in Afghanistan, this occurs only in 16% of births. One Norwegian woman out of 175 will lose their babies before reaching the age of 5, while at the other extreme, in Afghanistan every woman undergoes the loss of a child throughout her life. Looking at other countries at the bottom of the list, comparisons are no less dramatic: a woman out of 14 in Chad and Somalia are in danger of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. In Italy the risk of maternal mortality is less than 1 out of 15,000 women.

Top 10 best places to be a mother
1 Norway
2 Australia
2 Iceland
4 Sweden
5 Denmark
6 New Zealand
7 Finland
8 Belgium
9 Netherlands
10 France

Bottom 10 Worst Places To Be A Mother
155 Central African Republic
156 Sudan
157 Mali
158 Eritrea
159 DR Congo
160 Chad
161 Yemen
162 Guinea-Bissau
163 Niger
164 Afghanistan