State of the World's Mothers 2010

in commemoration of Mother’s Day, Save the Children is publishing its eleventh annual
State of the World’s Mothers report. The focus is on the critical shortage of health workers in the developing world and the urgent need for more female health workers to save the lives of mothers, newborn babies and young children. Every year, 50 million women in the developing world give birth with no professional help and 8.8 million children and newborns die from easily preventable or treatable causes.

This report identifies countries that have invested in training and deploying more female health workers and shows how these women are delivering lifesaving health care to some of the poorest and hardest-to-reach mothers and babies. It identifies strategies and approaches that are succeeding in the fight to save lives, and shows that effective solutions to this challenge are affordable – even in the world’s poorest countries.