Where's the best place to have a baby? Not in the United States...

More than 1 million babies die on the day they are born, according to a new report from "Save the Children." Despite this horrifying total, the numbers continue to improve. The United States is surprisingly dangerous for newborns, and many newborns can be saved with basic medical care.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The best place in the world to be born is, Luxembourg, Singapore, or Sweden, all where just .5 of every 1,000 births results in a fatality on the first day. India is the worst, with about 300,000 children dying within 24 hours of birth each year.

In the United States, 11,300 babies die on their first day following birth.

Save the Children evaluated statistics from 186 countries and scored them based on a number of additional factors, to see which countries were the best for babies and their mothers. Factors included education, income, education, and female political representation.

Finland ranked the highest, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo the lowest. The United States ranked 30, below most Western European countries.

Despite the grim statistics, the report wasn't all doom and gloom. The odds of survival are improving for babies. Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children commented,

"It's hard to imagine the depth of one mother's pain in losing her baby the very day she gives birth, let alone a million times over. Yet, this report is full of hope.  It shows there is a growing movement to save newborn lives and growing evidence that we can do it - saving up to 75 percent of them with no intensive care whatsoever."

In just the last two decades, global infant mortality has dropped from 12 million to 7 million.

The report also included information on how to slash the infant mortality rate further. According to the report, four inexpensive products could be used to save millions of babies on their first ay outside the womb. Those products are, resuscitation devices to aid breathing, antiseptics to prevent infections, antibiotics, and antenatal steroid injections to improve lung development in premature babies.

Notably, none of the numbers included in the report included the survival rates of children prior to birth. If those numbers were added, the ranking of the United States would drop dramatically on the list because of its pre-birth mortality.

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