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A baby is treated for whooping cough - Source: ONE News -
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New Zealanders are being warned to brace themselves for another epidemic of whooping cough, a disease that has virtually been wiped out in some countries.
New figures just out show infection rates are on the rise nationwide, prompting calls for parents to ensure their children's vaccinations are up to date.
After hours surgeries like the Pegasus 24 hour surgery in Christchurch which are at the coal face of dealing with illnesses like whooping cough in the community.
And while they are noticing only a slight increase in cases turning up there in recent weeks, they are expecting many more in the coming months as summer ends and the winter peak looms.
A baby coughing with every breath is a distressing sound for any parent.
But that was the reality for thousands of babies during New Zealand's last whooping cough epidemic four years ago. Those babies included Joseph Marshall whose father says the whole experience was a nightmare he would not wish on anyone.
Even though this Third World disease is easily preventable by vaccinating, it seems to be making a comeback.
"The statistics look like we're heading for another epidemic," says Dr Greg Simmons of the Ministry of Health.
Last month there were 66 cases of whooping cough nationwide compared to just 17 the previous December. But January's figures are higher still at 80 cases, most of them in Canterbury, Nelson Marlborough, Waikato and Counties Manukau.
"They often end up in hospital, very often on ventilators and rarely there are deaths from this disease," says Simmons.
The reason for the rise is New Zealand's struggling immunisation rates. While they are improving, only 83% of babies get whooping cough jabs at six weeks, three months and five months of age. Among Maori and Pacific babies that drops to as low as 70%.
If New Zealand's immunisation rates were higher an epidemic could be avoided.
"It's very frustrating because we don't need to have the illness in the community, the burden of disease in the community that we have, says Dr Ramon Pink," Canterbury Medical Officer of Health.
There is also concern that too many parents who do go ahead and vaccinate their babies are delaying. They are late getting them to the doctor or nurse for their jabs. Studies show even a four-week delay in getting the first jab doubles a baby's risk of whooping cough.
"Follow the schedule, be in contact with your general practice, with your well child provider to ensure you get those immunisations in a timely way," says Pink.
There's a warning too for adults who may unknowingly be carriers.
In adults whooping cough presents as a 100-day cough.
"It's not unusual to find an adult introducing the illness into a family and infecting very young children who will do worse with the disease," says Simmons.
So the advice to adults with a cough lasting more than three weeks is to keep some distance from newborns until they are vaccine-protected.
Symptoms of whooping cough start with a runny nose and a dry cough, with the cough progressing until it gets to the point where babies can have fits of coughing which produce the distressing whooping sound associated with the disease. That happens because babies cough so much they do not have time to draw a breath in.
Some babies can go blue and stop breathing altogether and need oxygen. Even worse, one in every 200 babies with whooping cough it will die from it.
