May 1, 2008

Augusta, GA - Doctors Hospital is now giving postpartum moms a new vaccine, Adacel, to protect babies from getting whooping cough, also known as pertussis, which can be a serious and fatal infection for infants.
Whooping cough might seem to be a disease of the past, but it's not. In fact, cases of the widely known childhood disease are on the rise in recent years. In recent years, reported cases of whooping cough have been on the rise. There are five times more cases of whooping cough today than there were ten years ago. And studies have shown that when a source of the disease is identified about 50 percent of infant whooping cough cases come from the parents.
Adults may have the disease and not realize it because their symptoms often resemble those of a common cold. This increases the likelihood of unwittingly transmitting the disease to an infant.
"To a mom, whooping cough is just a cold. To the baby it's a devastating, life-threatening disease. It kills babies," said pediatrician Dr. Reginald Pilcher.
Seventy-two percent of babies under 6 months of age reported to have whooping cough are hospitalized and 84 percent of reported whooping cough deaths are among babies under 6 months of age.
Whooping cough causes an infant to form thick, sticky mucus in their windpipes, which makes it hard to breathe and causes severe coughing spells. The "whoop" is the loud gasp they make as they struggle to get air through the narrowed airway passages between coughing spasms.
The highly contagious disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis is the result of an inflammation of the respiratory tract. It is transmitted with airborne droplets of respiratory secretions. Something as small as a simple sneeze, cough - or even talking up close can lead to exposure.