Health Highlights: May 6, 2008

Save the Children ranked 146 countries based on well-being for mothers and children. Sweden, Norway and Iceland were at the top of the list, while Nigeria was last. Eight of the 10 bottom-ranked countries were in sub-Saharan Africa, where four out of five mothers are likely to experience the death of a child.

The group said 30 percent of mothers and children in developing countries don't receive basic health interventions, such as prenatal care, skilled assistance during birth, immunizations and treatment for pneumonia and diarrhea, theAPreported.

More than six million of the 9.7 million children's deaths each year could be prevented using existing, low-cost tools and knowledge, Save the Children said.

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Restaurant Tobacco Bans May Prevent Teen Smoking

Total cigarette bans in restaurants may help prevent teen smoking, suggests a Massachusetts study that included 2,791 teens, ages 12 to 17, who were followed for four years.

Teens who lived in towns with strict restaurant smoking bans were 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers than teens in towns with no bans or weak bans (smoking allowed in designated areas), the study found.

Overall, about nine percent of the teens became smokers. The rate in towns without bans or with weak bans was 10 percent, compared to eight percent in towns with strict smoking bans, theAssociated Pressreported.

Along with reducing teens' exposure to smokers, smoking bans send teens the message that smoking is socially unacceptable, said study lead author Dr. Michael Siegel, of Boston University's School of Public Health.

"When kids grow up in an environment where they don't see smoking, they are going to think it's not socially acceptable. If they perceive a lot of other people are smoking, they think it's the norm," Siegel told theAP.

The study is published in the May issue of the journalArchives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

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