page_title: Mother
section_title: Health and safety issues
hierarchical_section_title: Mother / Health and safety issues
caption_attribution_description: Esnart has four children and has lost four babies in childbirth. She came for family planning services and decided to have a sterilisation because she does not want to get pregnant again. On average women in Malawi have six children. Yet families nationally say their preferred family size would be four children. Background On 11 July 2012 the UK Government and the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation will host a groundbreaking summit to cut in half the current number of women and girls in the world’s poorest countries without access to contraception, but who wish to avoid pregnancy or space their children. Every woman and girl deserves the opportunity to to determine her own future. Contraceptives give the world's poorest women the power to decide if and when to have another child. Find out more at www.dfid.gov.uk/changinglives To follow the London Summit on Family Planning visit www.dfid.gov.uk/fpsummit Picture: Lindsay Mgbor/Department for International Development Terms of use This image is posted under a Creative Commons - Attribution Licence, in accordance with the Open Government Licence. You are free to embed, download or otherwise re-use it, as long as you credit the source as Lindsay Mgbor/Department for International Development'.
context_page_description: A mother is the female parent of a child. Mothers are women who inhabit or perform the role of bearing some relation to their children, who may or may not be their biological offspring. Thus, dependent on the context, women can be considered mothers by virtue of having given birth, by raising their child, supplying their ovum for fertilisation, or some combination thereof. Such conditions provide a way of delineating the concept of motherhood, or the state of being a mother. Women who meet the third and first categories usually fall under the terms 'birth mother' or 'biological mother', regardless of whether the individual in question goes on to parent their child. Accordingly, a woman who meets only the second condition may be considered an adoptive mother, and those who meet only the first or only the third a surrogacy mother.
  An adoptive mother is a female who has become the child's parent through the legal process of adoption. A biological mother is the female genetic contributor to the creation of the infant, through sexual intercourse or egg donation. A biological mother may have legal obligations to a child not raised by her, such as an obligation of monetary support.
context_section_description: A maternal death is defined by WHO as "the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes".
  About 56% of maternal deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and another 29% in South Asia.
  In 2006, the organization Save the Children has ranked the countries of the world, and found that Scandinavian countries are the safest places to give birth, whereas countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the least safe to give birth. This study argues a mother in the bottom ten ranked countries is over 750 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth, compared to a mother in the top ten ranked countries, and a mother in the bottom ten ranked countries is 28 times more likely to see her child die before reaching their first birthday.
  The most recent data suggests that Italy, Sweden and Luxembourg are the safest countries in terms of maternal death and Afghanistan, Central African Republic and Malawi are the most dangerous.
  Childbirth is an inherently dangerous and risky process, subject to many complications. The "natural" mortality rate of childbirth—where nothing is done to avert maternal death—has been estimated as being 1500 deaths per 100,000 births. Modern medicine has greatly alleviated the risk of childbirth. In modern Western countries the current maternal mortality rate is around 10 deaths per 100,000 births.
caption: Sub-Saharan African countries carry the highest risks in terms of maternal and infant mortality and health.
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