Whooping Cough Surge in Adults Threatens Babies

Health officials confirm a resurgence of whooping cough in some parts of Canada and the U.S. A one-month old child named Harper Whitehead died last week due to whooping cough. His family urged to Albertans to protect their children against this fatal disease.

Whopping cough is a sort of serious infectious disease that creates uncontrollable and painful coughing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, U.S.A., termed this year as the worst one for whooping cough in the previous five decades. Dr. Allison McGeer, working at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital as the director of infection control, said that the outbreak was the result of the disease cycle as whooping cough was approaching towards its peak point of the cycle.

According to Canadian Public Health Agency, whooping cough reaches its peak point at the interval of 2 to 5 years.

Dr. McGeer assumed that this outbreak could be the result of a less strong vaccine introduced about 30 years ago in order to reduce the adverse effects of whooping cough vaccination. Those vaccines worked really well but wore off in adulthood.