National Family Safety Program has announced the conclusion of its campaign "Don’t shake me" which started on January 2012 under the auspice of Her Royal Highness Princess Adela Bint Abdullah Al-Saud - Chairman of the National Family Safety Program.
The objective of this campaign was to reduce inflected head injuries or “Shaken Baby Syndrome” in King Abdulaziz Medical City - Riyadh and targeted new mothers in neonatal wards, children clinics, pregnancy and childbirth follow-up clinics, Um Al-Hamam and Khashm Al- Aan clinics.
During the course of the campaign, the National Family Safety Program made great efforts in collaboration with the relevant departments in King Abdulaziz Medical city such as the Nursing Department, Social Responsibility and Patient Relations Department, where patient education specialists, nurses and social workers participated by spreading awareness among mothers on the dangers of violently shaking infants and children and how to deal with a crying baby in personal presentation lectures (10 minutes) for each individual mother as well as providing them with brochures and gifts for each child. It is worth mentioning that more than 6000 mothers were educated during this campaign.
The Executive Director of the National Family Safety Program Dr. Maha Abdullah Al- Muneef said that the importance of this campaign is shown in educating the public and mothers in particular of the serious effects of violently shaking infants and children during a tantrum by any of the parents, where crying is the main reason that drives parents to strongly shake the baby to calm him down which cause inflected head injuries or (Shaken Baby Syndrome). Shaken Baby Syndrome is the medical term for this form of children violence, and this kind of behavior is very dangerous and may cause brain injury, spinal cord injury, retinal hemorrhages in the eye, fractures in the rib cage, resulting in (death, learning disability, blindness, physical disabilities, or convulsions).
This campaign is one of the awareness programs for preparing parents which proved to be beneficial in Western countries in reducing children’s violence rates, especially when it comes to serious head injuries. These educational programs are usually offered in hospitals to further explain the preventive methods of severe head traumas and provide the mothers with the beneficial and needed skills on how to deal with a crying baby.
Furthermore, Project Manager and Operating Program Director of the National Family Safety Program Ms. Mona Al Qahtani mentioned that a study was conducted to measure the outcome of conducting such campaigns, 100 mothers out of 2000 were randomly selected and then contacted (via phone) to ask her about how much of the information that was presented 4 months ago do they remember, and it was found that 51% of them remember the information provided during the campaign. From this point, the program seeks to generalize this experience in all hospitals around the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, due to the serious effects of violently shaking infants and children.
She added that 12 cases of severe head injuries resulting from shaking infants and children are submitted annually in the National Registry in the health sector - the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a mortality rate of 25% and a disability rate of 50%.
During the campaign “Don’t shake me “we did not register any case from the targeted mothers during the campaign, which shows the effectiveness of this project as a preventive measure for the Shaken Baby Syndrome. A proposal to the Ministry of Health was presenting issuing the accreditation of this preventive measure to be applied as a Health Education Program in all hospitals around the Kingdom.