Op-Ed: The greatest Mother’s Day gift
As a child growing up, I remember my mother saving the best cuts at dinner for me, making sure my clothes were ironed, that I had books for school and saw a doctor every time I ran a temperature. At that tender age, I already knew that all a mother ever wants is for her children to be healthy, develop well and thrive when they grow up.
But what the best mothers have to offer is sometimes simply not good enough.
In urban slums, rural and remote areas where many mothers themselves are
malnourished, lack social protection, and access to health services and
education, what she can offer her child can be extremely limited.
Simply put, a mother’s greatest dream is for a child that survives and
thrives, but it remains a dream for many in South East Asia.
That is not to dismiss great strides made in parts of the region. On Save the
Children’s 2014 State of the World’s Mothers report, Singapore has again been
ranked 15th out of 178 countries, ahead of Japan, New Zealand, UK and USA.
Cambodia (ranked 132nd) and Vietnam (ranked 93rd) have both made significant
improvements in maternal and child health over the past 15 years; Cambodia
reduced lifetime risk of maternal mortality by two thirds while Vietnam
reduced that by half. Children in Thailand (ranked 72nd) are now 40% less
likely to die before their fifth birthday than they were 15 years ago.
Indeed, these overall improvements are impressive but they also mask huge
disparities in terms of maternal and child well-being. These can be in terms
of the divide between the rich and the poor or between urban and rural
communities. In both Cambodia and Vietnam, a child living in rural or
mountainous areas is 2.5 times more likely to die than a child living in an
urban area. In Laos, less than 5 per cent of the poorest quintile have trained
help when they deliver their babies, compared to 90 per cent in the richest
quintile.
Globally, nearly half of the 6.6 million children dying each year die because
their bodies are so weak from lack of the right nutrients to fight off common
illnesses. Many babies are born small as a direct result of malnourished
mothers, which highlights the critical importance of better nutrition for
women and girls. In Cambodia alone, 40 per cent of the children are stunted,
many of them from poor and rural communities. Children who are stunted at a
young age will not develop mentally and physically as they should, making it
even harder for them to break out of the poverty cycle.
Breast milk is widely regarded as one of key solutions to protecting infants
from stunting. It is the single best source of food and nutrients for any
infant – breastfed babies are less likely to be malnourished, have stronger
immune systems, less susceptible to obesity and diabetes later in life, and
have a higher IQ than non-breastfed babies. Mothers who breastfeed their
babies too are less likely to die from post-partum hemorrhage and contract
ovarian and breast cancer later on.
Yet because mothers are not provided with a supportive environment to
breastfeed their children, many are on formula or other liquids at just a
couple of weeks or months old. Mothers working in informal sectors do not have
the maternity leave they need, some are unaware of the benefits of
breastfeeding due to aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes, while
others lack support to persevere in exclusive breastfeeding.
Women also need protection in order to have babies only when their bodies are
ready to conceive and deliver. A teenage girl is twice as likely to die from
pregnancy complications as a woman in her twenties. In parts of South East
Asia, teenage pregnancy is on the rise and with a lack of sex and reproductive
health education and availability of safe abortion services, girls are left
having unprotected sex and seeking illegal abortions to handle unplanned
pregnancies. For instance, Thailand currently has the highest rate of teenage
pregnancy in the region, at 54 per 1,000 live births, with many other girls
seeking illegal abortions as the country forbids it except for cases of rape
or serious risk to the mother’s health.
In order to improve the well-being of mothers and children, deliberate choices
need to be made by families, communities, corporates and governments to
support and protect them. It is ensuring that every mother and child has
access to a health worker, is supported in breastfeeding, protected from
childbirth until a suitable age and is able to go to school.
Filipino
mothers tuck their babies on their chests at a ward of state-owned
Fabella maternity hospital in Manila.
All a mother wants is for her child to survive and thrive. This
Mother’s Day, Save the Children calls on families, communities,
corporations and governments to give mothers the best gift they
could ever ask for: a supportive environment for them to raise their
children.
By Lim Lynette
By Lim Lynette
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