Category: Radio
4
Date: 06.05.2005
Printable version
To mark Baby Safety Week, 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4's Building
A Healthier Britain on Tuesday 10 May looks at how a simple
piece of advice has saved the lives of an estimated 200,000 babies.
Ìý
However, a new report shows that if current methods
of analysis had been available in the Seventies, many more lives would
have been saved.
Ìý
Incredibly, the trend to sleep babies on their fronts,
the cause of so many deaths, was the result of untested studies.
Ìý
By the mid-Eighties, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS,
commonly referred to as cot death) rates had increased in many countries.
Ìý
Theories ranged from viral infections to irregular heart
rhythms and over-heating, but no-one knew quite why the number of deaths
had increased.
Ìý
A report in the Netherlands suggested that putting babies
to sleep on their fronts led to a high risk of cot death.
Ìý
Professor Peter Fleming, consultant
paediatrician in Bristol, then starting the Avon Cot Death Study, was
fascinated by the findings in the Dutch report and, with his colleague
Doctor Ruth Gilbert, analysed their local data and found that
93 per cent of babies in the Avon area who had died had been put to
sleep lying on their fronts.
Ìý
Researchers refused to believe that something as simple
as this could have such a profound effect; it wasn't until a follow-
up study in 1991 that Professor Fleming felt confident enough to approach
the government's health advisors with his findings.
Ìý
Following a high profile campaign on the issue by TV
presenter Anne Diamond - who lost her own child through SIDS - the Government
gave their official support to the study and launched a highly successful
national campaign - Back To Sleep.
Ìý
As a direct result, cot deaths fell by 70% nationally
- the equivalent of about 12 babies per week.
Ìý
Dr Ruth Gilbert, now at the Institute of Child Health
in London, has discovered that in the Forties it was standard practice
for babies to be put to sleep on their backs.
Ìý
The research which reversed this tied rubber sheets
across the babies faces, and claimed they couldn't suffocate lying on
their fronts.
Ìý
Tragically, if studies from the Seventies had been analysed
together as is the practice today, it would have been clear then - two
decades before the Back To Sleep campaign - how dangerous it was for
babies to sleep on their fronts.
Ìý
Although the fall in the number of deaths following
the Back To Sleep campaign was enormous, 350 babies still die from Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome in the UK every year and the research continues.
Ìý
Further evidence from Professor Fleming's group showed
that other risk factors included parents who smoke, and having the baby
in the parental bed rather than in a separate cot in the same room.
Ìý
His team are currently investigating the role that genetics
play in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Ìý
Building A Healthier Nation is on Radio 4 on Tuesday
10 May at 9.00pm and repeated on Wednesday 11 May at 4.30pm.
