The Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to compile safety measures to help prevent accidents involving young children who get cords from curtains or blinds around their necks, and possibly seek a redesign of such products to make them safer.
The action follows reports of children being killed or injured after being choked by curtain cords, including a case reported by the Japan Pediatric Society.
In that case from last July, a 1-year-old boy managed to put a living room curtain control cord around his neck before he fell forward. The boy's mother found him not breathing minutes later. The child was taken to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with cerebral hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain. He would have died had he not been promptly found, the pediatric society said.