This article is from page 6 of the 2013-04-02 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
AN OUTBREAK of whooping cough in the community has been attributed to a “fading in the immunity with age” of a childhood vaccine.
Cases of pertussis, more commonly known as whopping cough, has doubled in the last year from 217 cases in 2011 to more than 444 cases in 2012, with a number reported in Clare.
The illness can be fatal if contracted by infants, and public health specialists are now calling on pregnant women to be vaccinated against the disease, even if they were previously vaccinated as a child.
First year students in secondary schools are also been vaccinated against whopping cough as part of a routine secondary school vaccine programme, as the vaccine is now considered to have a ten-year life span.
Dr Rose Fitzgerald, Specialist in Public Health Medicine based in the mid-west, said the most at risk from pertussis are babies less than two months as they are too young for the vaccine.
The HSE is therefore putting emphasis on pregnant women and recommending they be offered Tdap vaccine between 28 and 32 weeks of pregnancy to enable protection of the very young baby via the transfer of maternal antibodies.
Close family adult contacts of babies born before 32 weeks are also recommended vaccination if not vaccinated.
Siblings of these babies should be age appropriately vaccinated.
As many as 32 per cent of whopping cough cases occur in case where children are less than six months old.