Sudden Unexpected Death in Childhood
Debate between Andy MacNae and John Hayes(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this important debate and for his very moving speech. I recently had the honour of meeting Eleanor Wroath, who is here in the Gallery today with her son Sam. Eleanor lost her daughter Miranda, aged 18 months, in 2008. Since then, she has been a tireless campaigner for raising awareness of sudden unexplained death in childhood. She and Sam will be running the Great North Run in support of the charity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as highlighted by campaigners such as Eleanor and Sam, there is an urgent need for more specialist research to understand the causes of and the risk factors underlying SUDC?
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
Order. Given the seriousness of the subject and of the hon. Lady’s intervention, I let that go, but interventions should generally be slightly more pithy.
Andy MacNae
Yes, of course I agree, and I am coming on to the research. We simply owe families answers and our best efforts to find those answers.
As I was saying, we know that research and awareness raising, backed up by national leadership, can make a profound difference, as it has in other areas. When priorities are clear, progress does follow. For example, research and safer sleep campaigns have significantly reduced unexplained infant deaths—known as sudden infant death syndrome, formerly cot death. About 200 babies die from SIDS each year compared with 40 older children from SUDC, yet there has been 100 times more research into SIDS than SUDC, which receives only a fraction of the attention.
Peter Fleming CBE, the clinical lead for the SIDS Back to Sleep campaign and a scientific adviser to SUDC UK, has said:
“Research into unexpected deaths in infancy has led to an 80% reduction in such deaths over the past 30 years in the UK. Unexpected deaths in older children are less common, much less well understood, and to date little research has been conducted in the UK to try to understand or prevent such deaths… I am convinced that with the right research we will soon be able to prevent many deaths”
of older children. The families here today are not asking for guarantees—they understand that science takes time—but simply asking for this issue to be treated with the urgency it deserves.