City Wakes Up
Jill Porter - 10/06/04

NOW THEY GET IT.

 City officials called a hasty press conference yesterday to warn the public that sleeping with an infant puts the baby at risk of sudden death.
 Because, since Saturday, two more babies have died in Philadelphia while sleeping with other people.
 The city had been making plans for a bigger announcement next week to launch a public-awareness campaign about the dangers of co-sleeping. But Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said the latest deaths convinced him the public had to be alerted immediately.
 "We could not in good conscience wait when we had a couple of instances in the last couple of days," Goldsmith said. "We have an obligation as a city to bring it to public attention."
 His urgency was welcome, if ironic - considering other city officials have long known about the dangers of co-sleeping and said nothing.
 They even bungled the press conference.
 City Health Commissioner John Domzalski announced that 68 infants had died in the city while co-sleeping in the past 18 months, a figure far in excess of the number provided to me previously by his own department.
 A Health Department spokesman said afterwards that had been a "misstatement" and that it included infant deaths that did not occur while co-sleeping.
 The actual number of fatalities that occurred during co-sleeping in the past 18 months is 48, the spokesman said, a figure which I've reported previously.
 Frankly, if I were running this city, I'd be out of patience with the ongoing blunders of the Health Department and my confidence in Domzalski's leadership would be sorely shaken.
 It was his staff, with his acquiescence, that refused to alert the public to the dangers of bed-sharing, even as alarmed officials at the city's Department of Human Services urged a public warning two years ago.
 Health officials refused to take a stand for fear of angering supporters of co-sleeping, including militant breast-feeding advocates who minimize its risks because it promotes nursing.
 But the increasing number of deaths, and the columns I've written exposing the department's inaction, forced city officials to confront the problem.
 "Co-sleeping has to be regarded as a high-risk practice," Domzalski said yesterday, when city officials finally faced the media and took a strong stand.
 The deaths have increased this year, he said - primarily in the African-American community - despite the fact that the risk factors for sudden-infant-death syndrome have decreased. Fewer mothers smoke cigarettes, for instance, one of the contributing factors in SIDS.
 Domzalski's admonition was echoed by DHS Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner.
 "More and more healthy children are dying in a co-sleeping situation," she said.
 "Children should sleep alone in an uncluttered crib on his or her back."
 Next week's press conference will detail the specifics of the public-awareness campaign, which will include TV and radio public-service announcements, newspaper advertisements, and personal outreach through various networks to individual families.
 On Saturday, a healthy 2-month-old baby sleeping with her mother at a relative's house was found dead in the morning. On Monday, a 2 1/2-month-old boy with congenital heart problems also was found dead.
 Officials said these deaths will be investigated within 48 hours, another positive change of policy. In the past, officials waited long months for the death-review team to issue a report.
 The circumstances of all co-sleeping deaths will be probed in an effort to pinpoint exactly why infants die while sleeping with other people. Most of them die of asphyxia for unknown reasons.
 And the department has launched a "comprehensive survey" in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania to determine how commonplace the practice of co-sleeping is.
 The changes in attitude and policy are a welcome effort to aggressively address a tragic problem.
 It's just a damn shame they're so long overdue.