Mums who give birth at a hospital near White City are to receive baby boxes for their child to sleep in following the launch of a new pilot scheme aimed at reducing infant mortality rates.
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust will hand out cardboard cot beds at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, following its success in Finland, which has seen its infant mortality rate drop from 65 infant deaths per 1,000 births in 1938 to 2.26 per 1,000 births in 2015.
Currently the UK has some of highest rates of infant mortality in Europe, ranking 22nd out of 50 European countries, with 4.19 deaths per 1,000 births.
The mums at the Du Cane Road hospital will be the first in the country to receive the boxes, which are made from a very thick cardboard, and traditionally used in Finland as a baby’s bed for up to the first eight months of their life.
Replacing the need for the traditional Moses basket or cot, it is thought the small size of the baby box prevents babies from rolling onto their tummies which experts think can contribute to sudden infant death syndrome.
The trust will distribute 800 baby boxes, which also come with a firm foam mattress, waterproof mattress cover, cotton sheet and education materials, to new mums on a first come first serve basis from the end of June.
The babies will be monitored by the trust until they are eight months old and their parents asked to fill out a questionnaire.
Dr Karen Joash, consultant obstetrician at the trust who is leading the baby box trial, said: “These boxes and the education resources that sit alongside them have been proven to help reduce the infant mortality rate in Finland and we hope that these results could be replicated in the UK.”
