Whooping cough death on NSW north coast

March 11, 2009

This is paving the way for mandatory vaccination, isn't it? They're

dredging the bottom of the barrel in journalism to make the point!

Posted Tue Mar 10, 2009 7:23pm AEDT

Updated Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:51am AEDT

New South Wales Health last night confirmed that a four-week-old baby girl

from the state's north coast died from whooping cough.

The baby was admitted to hospital last week and died in intensive care on

Monday.

It is the first death in the state from whooping cough since the 1990s.

The Health Department is now offering a free whooping cough vaccination for

all new parents and carers of young babies to try and stem an epidemic of

the disease.

Dr McAnulty from NSW Health says there have been more than 3,300

cases of whooping cough in the first two months of this year.

He says that is more than seven times the number of cases in the same period

last year.

" Because parents can, and grandparents and other adults can, spread it to

new babies we're really urging new parents, new grandparents other adults

who are caring for young babies to go along to their GP and get a free

vaccine, " he said.

" It used to cost, but now it's free because of this epidemic, to help

protect your small baby from getting infected from you. "

He also says the disease can affect people of all ages, but young children

are particularly susceptible to serious illness.

" While adults can get relatively mild symptoms, maybe a persistent cough,

particularly worse at night, the real problem is they can spread it to small

babies and small babies won't have immunity, " he said.

" They won't have had all their full course of vaccine yet and, because they've

got small airways and things, they can get very sick indeed and even die. "

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