City Gets Serious about rising toll of dead infants
Jill Porter - 09/24/04

IT'S TAKING AIM AT BED-SHARING

THE TERRIBLE toll rises.

Four more infants have died in the city while sharing a bed since I wrote about the alarming trend two weeks ago, bringing the total this year alone to 27.
That's a grim average of three babies per month.
And, in a sudden turnabout, the city Health Department has decided to do something about it.
"We've got to get beyond the social niceties about this issue and change our message to identify that there are extremely serious risks associated with co-sleeping - to include death," Health Commissioner John Domzalski told me this week.
Domzalski said the department also is going to "change the entire way we look at infant deaths" by conducting an investigation immediately. Now, the department waits months for a report from the death-review team.
That kind of instant scrutiny has been successful in reducing heat-wave deaths, Domzalski said, because health officials quickly learn what happened and tell the public how they can avoid falling victim.
"I believe we're going to make a serious impact in reducing these deaths," he said.
And that's great.
But until now Domzalski's department has shown an infuriating unwillingness to acknowledge the dangers of family bed- sharing.
Two weeks ago, when I documented the staggering number of sudden-infant deaths that have occurred while co-sleeping, the department's medical director, Dr. Joanne Godley, said the practice wasn't dangerous when done "safely" and refused to discourage it.
Indeed, the column revealed that the Health Department had rejected a plea from alarmed officials at the city's Department of Human Services to conduct a high-profile public-awareness campaign about bed-sharing risks.
Now, after the column and intervention by Managing Director Phil Goldsmith, Domzalski is newly and suddenly appalled at the death toll.
While he demurred from blaming all the deaths on co-sleeping, since most of the babies died of asphyxiation for unknown reasons, he cited the four infants who smothered when another person rolled over on them as reason enough to raise a red flag.
"If we had four deaths with measles or whooping cough, we'd have an all-out public- health effort," he said.
My point exactly. And yet dozens of babies have died without one word about it from health officials, who were apparently cowed by breast-feeding advocates and other factions who are militant supporters of co-sleeping.
Over the last 18 months, at least 47 infants died while in a family bed. And that number may be much higher because SIDS death-scene investigations were sporadic until this year.
Domzalski acknowledged that he allowed the professional staff to decide what was and wasn't said about co-sleeping, and "to be candid about it, I didn't take issue with that."
But he, said, "I'm not here to defend what's been done in the past, but to look at where we're going in the future."
Goldsmith said he convened a meeting with the Health Department and DHS last week "to understand the issue and make sure we were on the same page.
"Both departments are working on an aggressive program to communicate to the public about this and other programs that affect the health and welfare of our children," he said.
DHS communications director Ted Qualli said he expected to provide Goldsmith a proposed public-awareness campaign about co-sleeping by as early as today.
Again, that's great.
But too late for the dozens of infants who died while numbskull city officials worried more about avoiding controversy than saving lives.