Often thought of as an archaic disease, incidences of whooping cough are actually on the increase in Britain. An outbreak in 2012 killed 10 babies in the UK, and highlighted the fact that pregnant women should get vaccinated, in order to pass on some immunity to their unborn babies and protect them from the deadly disease.
Although it is an unpleasant disease, family wellness is not generally compromised by the disease, which usually starts with mild symptoms. It is only the very young that are at risk as well as, to an extent, the elderly and those whose immune systems are compromised. Newborn babies have the highest mortality risk from the disease.
In general, the mild symptoms of the bacterial infection progress into a severe cough, which has a distinctive ‘whooping’ sound. Prolonged coughing fits can leady to exhaustion, muscle weakness and general discomfort, but the symptoms usually pass on their own, with time.
Highly contagious, the disease passes from person to person via air droplets which are emitted when someone coughs or sneezes. With over 16 million cases worldwide each year, 95 percent of those in developing countries, the disease is generally thought of as something that doesn’t affect western countries such as the UK. As such, there has been no vaccination programme in place, until the recent outbreak. For this reason, women who are between 28 and 38 weeks pregnant are advised to get vaccinated in order to protect their babies from the epidemic.
Families who live abroad are advised to find out from a local doctor whether they should get immunised against the disease for their wellbeing, as the rates of whooping cough vary in different places around the world.
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