Page 2671 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 1993
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RED NOSE DAY
Ministerial Statement
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (3.05): Madam Speaker, I seek leave to present a ministerial statement on Red Nose Day.
Leave granted.
Mr Kaine: This is not long nose day?
MR BERRY: No. That applies only on your side. I would like to draw members' attention to an important date. This Friday, 27 August, is Red Nose Day, the major fundraising event for the Sudden Infant Death Association. SIDS, also referred to as cot death, is defined as the sudden death of an infant which is unexpected by history and where there is no cause of death found after post-mortem examinations. The definition reflects the facts but not the emotions or impact on the community of the loss of a baby.
Red Nose Day, which has been an annual event in Australia since 1988, serves to heighten community awareness of all aspects of sudden infant death syndrome. It is an event which the people of Canberra have always supported in a very positive manner. On Red Nose Day the community has the opportunity to publicly and financially support the vital work that the Sudden Infant Death Association carries out both in the local community and in Australia as a whole. As in previous years, behind this year's encouragement to be silly for a day lies a serious plea for all of us to continue to give that much needed support to enable the association to continue its research into the causes of SIDS.
Madam Speaker, the money raised locally from Red Nose Day, as with other States, will be divided between national and local projects. Proposed national projects are assessed individually by the independent review tribunal. To date that council has provided funding for more than 75 research programs, including initiating a million dollar multi-centre program grant to investigate the failure of breathing controls during sleep and how certain conditions may trigger this failure in a baby.
Other money raised nationally on Red Nose Day has gone towards establishing the first SIDS sleep disorder clinic at the children's hospital at Camperdown in New South Wales. The centre not only carries out general research projects associated with SIDS but also allows parents who have suffered the grief of losing a baby to take any subsequent baby they have to the centre, where the child's sleep patterns will be studied and analysed over a period of two nights. This research and analysis provides information to the researchers and also allows for the provision of reassurance, advice and support to parents.
Nationally, Madam Speaker, other research which is currently funded includes the examination of epidemiological factors such as the family environment in groups with low and high occurrence of SIDS; differences between SIDS patterns in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal babies in Western Australia; microbiological and immunological factors, including the relationship between SIDS occurrence
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