Building a healthier Britain. Part 2, Cot death.

The first in a four-part series in which Richard Hannaford looks at how since the 1950s doctors have continuously researched people's health and lifestyle, leading to epidemiological studies, the results of which we can perhaps now begin to assess. This part focuses on cot death. Currently about 350 babies a year in the UK die, but in the late 1980s the figure was four times that. So what changed and why? Bob Carpenter talks about his early research into sudden infant death in the 1950s, and Peter Fleming discusses the Avon Cot Death Study of the 1980s which led to the discovery, via Ruth Gilbert's research, that babies put to sleep on their fronts stood a far greater risk of suffering sudden death than others. The story of Ann Diamond's son's cot death then led to Britain's biggest awareness of cot death and biggest campaign: 'Back to Bed.'