Wahakura may help young mums beat Sids problem

Despite the public campaigns, despite the declining rates, there's still a sector of New Zealand homes where babies are dying from sudden infant death syndrome (Sids) and accidental suffocation.
They shouldn't. Sids is largely preventable. But the public message about what constitutes a safe sleeping environment for babies under 6 months is often a mixed one.
And it is a message Hastings community health specialist and GP David Tipene-Leach believes is failing mothers who smoked in pregnancy and who may be putting their babies at risk by bed-sharing.
For babies whose mothers didn't smoke in pregnancy, bed sharing can often be done safely.
About 20 per cent of both Maori and non-Maori parents regularly sleep alongside their babies all night, mostly to deepen the mother-child bond and for convenience when breast feeding.
But very often bed-sharing isn't safe. Smoking in pregnancy, premature birth and a low weight increase the risk of Sids and accidental suffocation when babies sleep in same bed as their parents.
Maternal smoking is generally considered to damage the baby's breathing response. So when covered with a blanket or an arm, when the neck is cocked forward on a pillow, or when the baby is under some sort of stress, the child may stop breathing.
The incidence of Sids has been declining in New Zealand since a public awareness campaign in the 90s. But about seven years ago, the decline in the rate for Maori babies stagnated.
Nationwide, about 65 babies die from Sids each year and 70 per cent are Maori.
Dr Tipene-Leach says it is socio-economic status rather than culture that accounts for the difference. "Most of our at-risk mums are young mums, not from wealthy families or well-educated. They're the ones who can't afford a $300 bassinet," he says.
"They're also the ones most likely to smoke during pregnancy and they fail to heed advice about bed-sharing, if indeed they hear it at all. Most of those mums are Maori." Dr Tipene-Leach thinks the wahakura, or flax bassinet, is the answer.
Wahakura sit on the parental bed to allow bed sharing, and Dr Tipene-Leach believes wahakura provide the same safe sleeping environment as traditional bassinets. He's been an advocate of wahakura for years. In 2006 he distributed 100 to Maori mums in Gisborne to "see how they worked out".
They loved them and used them consistently, he says.
But without the support of the Ministry of Health and agencies like Plunket, it's difficult to get wahakura, which can retail for $150 to $180, to the mothers who need them.
"There is no evidence that they are actually as safe as I am saying they are.
"I'm promoting this because this sleeping environment lives up to all the international safe-sleeping recommendations and it's likely to be attractive to Maori mothers.
"I've worked inside the Sids area for more than 15 years now and I feel some responsibility to find a way to prevent the death of these babies," he says.
For the past 18 months Dr Tipene-Leach has been setting up a research project to investigate whether wahakura provide the same safe-sleeping environment as bassinets.
University of Otago child health professor Dr Barry Taylor and head of midwifery Dr Sally Baddock will help head the investigation.
With the help of a research nurse and assistant and two data analysts they will spend the next three years comparing the physical and environmental sleeping patterns of 240 young Hawke's Bay babies in wahakura and the traditional bassinet.
Dr Tipene-Leach says bassinets are presently the "gold standard" when it comes to providing a safe-sleeping environment.
But by the end of the study, he says, the results will show whether wahakura and bassinets are comparable in terms of safety. "Who knows? Wahakura may be a better sleeping environment."