Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is de

fi ned as “the sudden death of any infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including complete postmortem examination, review of clinical history and examination of death scene.This topic is very important to me, being the owner of a child care facility and having another person's infant in my care for more than 12 hours a day. When I first took a SIDS training this issue really bothered me because I did not want anything happening to anyone's child even if it the circumstances were out of my hands.  I know that you are suppose to lay the child on their back to sleep and on their stomachs to play. I have all the charts up in my infant rooms at the center. It's really hard explaining to parents that although their child might sleep better and longer on their stomachs, it's for their protection that they sleep on thier backs.
SIDS is a very touchy subject for me. I take it very serously. I wish their was more precauticons that can be taken to keep SIDS from taking place.
In 1994 A national campaign (the "Back to Sleep" campaign) was launched to promote supine positioning during sleep. This really helped out the infant death rate. What bothers me the most about SIDS is that there really is not a known reason for it. The main focus is on smokers. This area is very touchy for me, considering we are dealing with infants. Babies who have no control of how they are layed down to sleep but parents who will still lay thier children on their stomachs because quote " it helps them sleep better" unquote.

Pediatricians and health providers in developing countries, such as Brazil, have little knowledge on risk fi rst year of life. Studies have shown that it has been hard to determine if SIDS is the cause of death for the third world countries

factors for SIDS since it is not seen as an important cause of death in the

 because the risk factors for SIDS is  similar to those found for non-SIDS cases in developing countries since they are closely associated with poverty. its characteristics and incidence rates are still not known in developing countries, characterized by very low income population.

As infant mortality is still quite high in poor countries and generally associated with infectious diseases and malnutrition, pediatricians and health providers have little knowledge on SIDS. Consequently, SIDS is often misdiagnosed and information about SIDS risk factors is not usually provided to parents.

After during research on SIDS in underdevelop countries I found it very distrubing that there is not a lot of information about SIDS to be able to prevent it from happening.

As a daycare provider, I continue to give my parents information about SIDS to assist in preventing it from happening.