Sudden infant death

Sudden infant death syndrome is a topic that I have always been interested in, because I feel like it can be preventable. The rate of SIDS  in the United States has gone down a ton in the last decade, but there are still incidents occurring. Nearly 2,500 babies die a year from SIDS in just the United States.  I think that if parents were informed more about the how to reduce the risk of SIDS there would be even fewer cases of SIDS. One of the most important things  a parent should know is never let a baby go to sleep on it's belly. This is something that every parent should know. It would kill me to hear parents tell me at the my job that they put their baby to bed on their bellies. I would always tell parents to never put their babies on their bellies until they were able to roll over because this increases the child's risk of SIDS. Some other things that can reduce a child's risk for SIDS is, do not let the child have a blanket until they are able to pull it away from their face, do not use bumpers in a child's crib, not smoking, and also using a pacifier. I think awareness is the most important factor here, the more people know about the matter the better the outcome will be.


http://www.sids.org/nprevent.htm

I decided to research Africa and see how they were different culturally from the United States on this topic. In Africa they believe that SIDS is caused by a curse on the mother. They also believe that the baby comes back to haunt the family. I found a organization called Kabissa that is dedicated to raise awareness about SIDS and prove that it is due to real causes not a myth. I really found this to be interesting, because in Africa the rate of SIDS is higher than the United State, if people just knew how to prevent it there then they could significantly lower the rate of SIDS. 

http://www.kabissa.org/civiorg/106