Hans Pietersen (46), a Pretoria IT engineer, has invented a device that targets Cot Death Syndrome. The Respisense Buzz was made to protect babies against cot death by triggering a cellphone vibrator motor inside their nappies when sensors detect that breathing has stopped for 15 seconds. Testing took place at the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. The device won a South African Bureau of Standards Prototype Award for design, but has yet to receive an SABS safety certificate. Currently breathing monitors available for home use make use of a sensor pad beneath the baby’s mattress to trigger an alarm, but do not feature a stimulation device. Hans thought of the device when his wife had triplets in 2002 and they felt the twins were vulnerable to cot death because they were 6 weeks premature.
The device uses the same tiny vibration motor found in cellphones, which, with the sensors and alarm system, is contained in a matchbox-sized device that attaches to a nappy waistband. If the baby’s breathing stops for 15 seconds, it is programmed to vibrate against the tummy. If no breathing movement is recorded for 5 seconds after that, a 90 decibel alarm is triggered.
Professor Gert Kirsten, head of the newborn unit at Tygerberg, said cot death was a failed respiration syndrome among infants not yet fully understood by medical science. It was responsible for the deaths of “perhaps one infant in every 500 to 1000 live births” in South Africa. He said apnoea was the cessation of breathing, often suffered by premature babies whose brains “forget to inhale”.
