State of the World's Mothers: The Report

Bill Gates Foundation: Every day, 17,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday. Increasingly, these preventable deaths  are occurring in city slums, where overcrowding  and poor sanitation exist alongside skyscrapers and  shopping malls. Lifesaving health care may be only  a stone’s throw away, but the poorest mothers and  children often cannot get the care they need.  This report presents the latest and most extensive  analysis to date of health disparities between rich  and poor in cities. It finds that in most developing  countries, the poorest urban children are at least  twice as likely to die as the richest urban children.  In some countries, they are 3 to 5 – or even more –  times as likely to die. The annual  Mothers’ Index  uses the latest data  on women’s health, children’s health, educational  attainment, economic well-being and female political  participation to rank 179 countries and show where  mothers and children fare best and where they face  the greatest hardships.
Ex: Among 25 of the wealthiest capital cities surveyed around the world, Washington, D.C. has the highest infant mortality rate. The study also found that babies from the District’s poorest wards are dying at much higher rates than the city’s already high average.