The Role of Death Review Committees

Excerpt

A 5-month-old infant placed to sleep in a partially inflated plastic bed was found, unresponsive, with her face pressed against the plastic in a trough created between the base and the side of the inflatable bed (1). The infant’s death was attributed to suffocation. Byard (2006) reviewed the circumstances of this death and recommended assessment of these types of inflatable beds by product safety experts (1).

Details about the circumstances and cause of this death were also collected by the South Australian Child Death and Serious Injury Review Committee, which undertook its own in-depth review. The result of this review was to recommend to the South Australian government that it request the relevant national regulatory body to amend regulations about children’s portable cots to incorporate the requirement that “no component of a portable folding cot be inflatable” (2). This change in national regulations was achieved three years after the infant’s death.