March 11, 2021
Infant death progress stymied by poverty
A leading figure in the fight against sudden unexplained death in infancy says further progress will require tackling deep-seated issues of poverty.
The latest data on the national SUDI prevention programme shows the number of unexplained deaths in 2019 was up on previous years.
David Tipene Leach says it’s still too early to know whether that represents a trend, but it shows the programme has lost its way.
He says when the Health Ministry set the pogramme up in 2017, it replaced the previous Māori leadership with mainly Pākehā nurses without the connections into the communities they needed to serve.
While most of the deaths continue to be linked to shared beds and mothers who smoked during pregnancy, just handing out safe sleep devices or pēpi pods to new mothers isn’t enough.
"We're getting new information saying the babies who are dying, the parents have already heard the messages. Sometimes they have even got a pēpi pod in the house. They have got an unwell baby,, they are exhausted parents, they are living in very poor housing situations and they haven't really got many good choices," Dr Tipene-Leach says.
He says if $30 billion can be spent on the Covid response, why is the country so unwilling to put money into Māori and Pacific communities to stop babies dying.
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