Babies dying while asleep a social phenomenon in Manitoba: report

A new report taking a second look at sleep safety in infants found a fundamental shift is needed to prevent babies from unnecessarily dying in their sleep.

‘Shifting the Lens: Understanding and Confronting Inequities in Sleep-Related Infant Deaths in Manitoba’ found the situation a family is in plays the largest role in how safe a baby is while sleeping.

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The special report was released Thursday by the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) and is a follow-up to one published four years ago on the same issue.

The new report recommends the best way to prevent sleep-related deaths in babies is for governments to get more involved in improving the social determinants of health for all Manitobans.

Sherry Gott, the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth, said caregivers and families have very little control over these factors, which can have grave consequences for children’s rights.

“This report demonstrates that risks for sleep-related infant deaths do not just derive from individual decisions, behaviours, and practices. Rather, they are in large part the result of the conditions of people’s daily lives and the wider set of factors and systems that shape them,” Gott said.

Gott said it is not fair or effective to leave caregivers on their own when it comes to preventing sleep-related deaths in infants.

In Thursday’s special report, 48 cases where infants died in their sleep environment were examined. The cases were reported between 2019 and 2021 in Manitoba.

One in three households in the report did not have a safe sleep surface for the baby.

It found 81 per cent of the babies who died were Indigenous and an ‘overwhelming majority’ of these deaths happened in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas.

Sixty per cent happened in overcrowded homes and serious environmental concerns were found in 40 per cent.

“Sleep-related infant deaths must be viewed as a symptom of larger social issues demanding recognition and rectification,” said Gott.

The special report re-issued the same recommendations it put out in 2020, including improving access to safe sleep information and education, and improving how sleep-related deaths are tracked.

Thursday’s report recommends the government start working with its departments and Indigenous governments to improve social determinants of health provincewide.

Minister of Families Nahanni Fontaine said the province has already been doing a lot of work on this topic and the report highlighted several important things.

“This is something that no Manitoba family should go through,” she said. “Infant death is one of the most heartbreaking scenarios that a family can go through.”

Nahanni said the NDP government has reestablished the Health Child Committee of Cabinet and it meets regularly.

“They are looking at all those social determinants of health which are the same things the MACY report is talking about,” she said.

She said the NDP has a cross-government approach to tackle this issue.

“It’s important work and we are taking it very seriously,” she said.