EDITORIAL - Mother-unfriendly

Philippine society is supposed to be matriarchal and the country, for the second time, is led by a woman. Yet the Philippines fared badly in an annual international survey on the state of mothers.

Now in its 10th year, the State of the World’s Mothers 2009 Report ranked the Philippines 42nd among 75 less developed countries, four notches lower than its rank last year. The report, prepared by the US-based Save the Children Inc., classified 154 countries into three development tiers, with the Philippines falling into the middle tier together with most other Asian nations. In this tier the Philippines ranked behind Thailand, which placed 11th, China (14th), Vietnam (23rd), Mongolia (29th) and Malaysia (36th).

The Mothers’ Index was based on women’s health, educational, economic and political status as well as children’s well-being. In the first tier of “more developed” countries, Sweden, Norway and Australia were ranked as the most mother-friendly countries in the world. In Tier 2, which included the Philippines, the best places were Cuba, Israel and Argentina. The Maldives, Cape Verde and Uganda topped the list in the last tier.

Sen. Pia Cayetano, who chairs the Senate committee on social justice, said the country would be unable to meet the Millennium Development Goals particularly in the reduction of maternal mortality and deaths of children under five years old. She said an average of 10 to 11 mothers die daily in the country from childbirth complications.

The country’s ranking in the Mothers’ Index was weighed down by the fact that in 2007, skilled health personnel were present at only 60 percent of childbirths. In the same year, 28 out of every 1,000 Filipino children did not live until their fifth birthday, 28 percent of children under five were moderately or severely underweight, and only 33 percent of women used contraceptives. Those were sobering figures as Filipinos paid tribute to their mothers on their special day last Sunday.