Vaccination Is Steady, but Pertussis Is Surging By TARA PARKER-POPE August 16, 2010, 6:17 pm
For four weeks, my 11-year-old daughter has been coughing. It is not your run-of-the-mill summer cold, but a violent, debilitating cough that takes over her body, usually at night. During these fits, her face turns red, and tears start streaming from her eyes. She coughs so hard she eventually starts to gasp for air, making a horrifying sucking sound that at one point had me reaching for the phone to call 911. But eventually she catches her breath. Several times she has coughed so hard she begins to throw up. It took a few visits to the pediatrician before she finally got a diagnosis: pertussis, the bacterial disease better known as whooping cough. That may sound surprising, since like most other children she was vaccinated against the disease on schedule, as an infant and again in preschool. But in recent years, pertussis has made an alarming comeback - even among adolescents and adults who were vaccinated as children. Highly contagious, spread by coughs and sneezes, pertussis is now epidemic in California, with 2,774 confirmed cases in 2010 - a sevenfold increase from last year, putting the state on track for the worst outbreak in 50 years. Seven infants have died. ... http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/vaccination-is-steady-but-pertussis-is-surging/ _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
