About 30 percent fewer American babies died of sudden infant death syndrome as the result of a campaign to teach caregivers to put infants to sleep on their backs instead of on their stomachs, a federal official said Monday.
Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said that since a national "Back to Sleep" education campaign began in 1994, the percentage of babies sleeping on their stomach has been reduced from 70 percent to less than 30 percent.Deaths from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, said Alexander, have fallen by 30 percent during that same period.
"This represents a saving of over 1,500 infant lives a year," said Alexander in a statement.
Before the "Back to Sleep" campaign started, there were 5,000 to 6,000 American SIDS deaths annually among babies ages 1 month to 1 year old.