CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND
PUBLIC HEALTH
I chose SIDS as my topic because I have a friend who lost her daughter to
SIDS at five months. It was a devastating loss twelve years ago and continues
to haunt her today.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is defined as the sudden death of
an infant less than 1 year of age that cannot be explained after a thorough
investigation is conducted, including a complete autopsy, examination of the
death scene, and review of the clinical history.
SIDS is the leading cause of death among infants aged 1–12 months, and
is the third leading cause overall of infant mortality in the United States.
The overall rate of SIDS in the United States has declined by more than 50%
since 1990. Several reasons for the decrease is advances in newborn care,
better nutrition, access to clean water, and widespread immunization. However,
there are still some young infants who appear healthy, already gaining weight,
learning to shake a rattle and starting to roll over that die un-expectantly in
their sleep.
In the United States, about 5,000 babies died of SIDS, the rate in
Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and South America experience a rate of 1 infant
in every 800. Careful data collection revealed surprising ethnic differences.
Bangladeshi infants in England
are almost always breast-fed, and they sleep surrounded by family members,
hearing noises and feeling the comforting touch of their caregivers. They do
not sleep deeply for long. But by contrast, their traditional British age-mates
slept in their own private spaces, never co-sleeping. Those long periods of
lone sleep may contribute to the higher rates of SIDS in white infants. Babies
of Asian descent were far less likely than babies of European or African decent
to succumb to SIDS.
In 1994 the Back-to-Sleep
campaign was launched to encourage parents to put their children to sleep on
their backs to help prevent SIDS. SIDS
rates began to degrease in every nation, especially those where stomach or side
sleeping had been the norm.
Following are three websites I have found with information regarding
SIDS.
http://www.kidshealth.org/
http://www.sidscenter.org
1 comment:
Crystal,
I am sorry about your friend's baby. SIDS is a very touching subject for me as well. Two of my sister lost their baby. One child lived to get three weeks old and the other one lived to get one month old. My sisters are still grieving over those two little girls and so am I. Thanks for sharing this great information with your colleagues.
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