Call for ban on babywalkers

Small children risk injury when using a babywalker

The use of 'sit-in' babywalkers should be restricted or even banned as parents fail to recognise that they can pose a health hazard to young children, researchers have claimed.

Teams of researchers in the UK and the USA have found that the use of babywalkers is widespread as many parents see them as a way of keeping a child quiet and safe, while encouraging mobility.

However, the researchers found that the use of babywalkers is often associated with unsafe practices, such as not using fireguards and stair gates.

The UK research focused on 1,600 parents with children aged between three and 12 months.

Research has already shown that between 12% and 50% of infants using babywalkers are injured, mostly from falling down stairways and steps, but also from increased access to other potential hazards, such as fires and heaters.

But although just over half of the parents used babywalkers, they did not consider that their child was at greater risk head injury, fractures, bruises or burns.

One in five of those who used a babywalker did not have a stair gate.

Expert warnings unheeded

Babies have a capacity for getting into trouble

The US study showed that more than three quarters of 154 people with responsibility for looking after children used babywalkers.

Of those, 78% believed that walkers were good children, and 72% thought that walker use accelerated development of independent walking skills, even though, the researchers point out, there is no evidence to support that belief.

More than 80% had been warned about safety issues by a paediatrician, but this advice appeared to carry little influence.

The UK researchers, Dr Denise Kendrick and Dr Patricia Marsh, from Nottingham University, called for health workers to take a more proactive line.

"Health professionals should support campaigns to limit the sale of babywalkers, but, in adddition, they should ascertain each family's reasons for walker use and try to find acceptable alternatives," they write.

"They should also make the family aware of the importance of properly fitted stair gates and fireguards and help the family to obtain and use such items of safety equipment."

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents recommends that parents do not use babywalkers.

A spokesman said: "If parents do use them, then it should be with care and under supervision at all times.

"Babies can move very fast in babywalkers, and end up toppling over or over-reaching themselves."