The maternal mortality rate in Africa’s newest nation, South Sudan, is estimated to be more than 2,000 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, “the highest in the world,” MediaGlobal reports. “‘In South Sudan, a woman has a bigger chance of dying during childbirth than to go to high school,’ Jane Coyne, program manager from Medicins Sans Frontieres, told MediaGlobal,” the news service writes.

“Emerging from decades of civil war, South Sudan lacks vital infrastructure and health services, including comprehensive maternal care, according to Martin Wani Kenyi, the health project manager in South Sudan for CARE,” MediaGlobal writes. Claudia Futterknecht, CARE country director for South Sudan, told MediaGlobal, “There is an urgent need to make lives of women and their families safer, and to strengthen the role of women and mothers in the South Sudanese society” (Yoon, 8/12).