COT DEATHS have almost halved since the start of this decade, according to figures published by the Irish Sudden Infant, Death Association.
The fall continued with a public awareness campaign advising parents that babies should not sleep face down, that they should not be subjected to cigarette smoke and that they should not be let get too warm.
The number of cot deaths has fallen from two per 1,000 live births in 1989 to about 0.9 last year.
Yet the causes remain a mystery, and these factors do not explain every cot death, said Ms Bernadette Kiberd, who presented an analysis of the Irish figures to an international conference on the subject in Dublin at the weekend.
Her in depth analysis of data from 1994 and 1995 compared 74 families who had a cot death with 259 families with healthy children. She found:
. Forty per cent of the families of cot death children were unemployed compared with 8 per cent of the families of healthy children.
. Most of the families of cot death children (56 per cent) had a history of infant death among the wider family compared with 14 per cent of the families of healthy children. The infant deaths in the wider families were not just confined to cot deaths.
. Most mothers of cot death children (72 per cent) smoked during pregnancy compared with 30 per cent of the mothers of healthy children.
. Most mothers of cot death children (64 per cent) drank during pregnancy compared with 49 per cent of the mothers of healthy children.
There are many individual cot deaths which cannot be explained by these factors, said Ms Kiberd, and the search for the causes has a long way to go.
For instance, her figures show a peak in cot deaths at two to three months of age. The causes of this peak, which may be connected in some way with the physiology of the child, are not yet known.
On the higher incidence of unemployment among the families said the incidence remains higher even when factors such as smoking are accounted for. Again, the reasons for this link are unknown, she said.
An alleged link between cot mattresses and cot death, raised in the UK in 1994, does not appear to be substantiated, according to ISIDA research.
"Some of our findings will obviously be very upsetting for parents whose child has died, and it is vital to say that we still cannot explain why any one individual child dies," she said. "Our research is still at an early stage and with one SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome] death in Ireland each week, it is imperative we continue to study this syndrome."
ISIDA is 21 years bid this year and 2,350 Irish children have died of SIDS in that time.
Yesterday a park bench memorial to children who die of cot death was dedicated at Malahide Castle, Co Dublin.
Cot death accounts for four in every 10 deaths among children up to two years of age.