January 09, 2017
Wahakura safe for baby sleep
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The study led by Associate Professor Sally Baddock of Otago Polytechnic and Professor Barry Taylor and Dr David Tipene-Leach of the University of Otago has been published in leading scientific journal Pediatrics.
(http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/12/29/peds.2016-0162)
Dr Tipene-Leach says it was conducted to collect hard evidence on the safety of wahakura and foam plastic pepi-pods as an alternative to infant-adult bed-sharing.
It concluded there were no significant differences in risk behaviours in wahakura.
The flax bassinets were developed as a culturally appropriate alternative to direct bed-sharing, which has been linked to greater rates of sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) among Maori, especially when combined with smoking in pregnancy.
Researchers recruited 200 predominantly Maori pregnant women from deprived areas of New Zealand as measured by the NZ Deprivation Index. They provided the women with either a wahakura or bassinet during pregnancy and then later compared the risks and benefits of infants sleeping in either device.
They investigated breastfeeding, infant sleep position, the amount of infant head covering during sleep, the amount of bed-sharing (without the device), and maternal sleep and fatigue.
At one month the baby’s sleep was monitored with infra-red video, and researchers identified no increase in head covering, prone/side sleep position or bed-sharing without the device in the wahakura group.
In interviews done at 6 months, the wahakura group reported twice the level of full breastfeeding – 22.5 percent vs 10.7 percent.
Dr Tipene-Leach says as Maori breastfeeding rates are now well below non-Maori results, that is a bonus.
Many district health boards have supported whakura as a way to tackle SUDI.
But officials in the Health Ministry were hostile until a ministerial U-turn in August, prompted by research from cot death expert Professor Ed Mitchell linking them to the first reduction in Maori infant mortality rates since 2000.
Dr Tipene-Leach says the new study will provide a degree of confort the ministry and DHBs working on the national Safe Sleep programme that incorporates a wahakura option.
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