The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Whooping cough is the most frequently reported, vaccine preventable disease in Canada. It poses serious health risks to young infants, so it is important to make sure your child is vaccinated on schedule, starting at the age of two months. Whooping cough is the common name for Pertussis, a highly contagious infection of the respiratory tract. It is caused by a bacterium called Bordetella pertussis. One of the main symptoms is severe coughing spells, and the disease gets its common name from the ÒwhoopÓ sound people often make as they try to catch their breath after one of these coughing spells. The bacteria that cause whooping cough are spread through droplets in the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. You can also become infected through direct contact with discharges from the nose or throat of an infected person. Widespread immunization with pertussis vaccine started in Canada in the 1940s, and subsequently the incidence of whooping cough began to decline dramatically. Over the past decade, however, the annual number of reported cases has ranged from 2,400 to 10,000, with many cases occurring in older children and young adults. One of the main reasons the rate has been going up is that the protection provided by the type of vaccine used until the mid-1990s tends to fade over time. Anyone can get whooping cough, but the health effects are usually much worse for children less than a year old. In Canada, whooping cough now kills one to three infants per year, usually those who are unvaccinated, or under-vaccinated. The best way to minimize the risk of complications from whooping cough is to make sure your child is fully immunized. Call your health care provider to set up a time for your childÕs shots. Talk to your health care provider about ways to treat the minor side effects of shots, such as mild fever and tenderness. Ask for a written record of your childÕs shots. Keep it in a safe place at home where you can find it easily. If your child is exposed to anyone with whooping cough, check your childÕs immunization record right away. Seek immediate medical attention if the shots are not up to date. See your health care provider if anyone in your household has a cough that lasts longer than a week. It is important to get an accurate diagnosis, and to make sure that anyone with whooping cough gets treatment and avoids close contact with young children while the disease is still contagious. Even if your child has had whooping cough, continue with the complete series of shots. You can get whooping cough more than once, and immunization is the best way to protect children from serious complications if they become infected again. The vaccine to protect against whooping cough is provided free to all young children in Canada as part of the publicly funded routine immunization schedule. The current vaccine is safer and more effective than the old vaccine.
