Pertussis

This is my little platform right now. I like to have a topic to get fired up about and I have been doing some research on this subject. Chris and I plan to have more children and so that is why this is of interest to me. For those of you that live in the area you may have noticed billboards that say Protect Your Family Against Pertussis. I am going to tell you a little more about it. The following is mostly copy and pasted so I am going to site these two websites http://www.drgreene.org/ and http://www.immunizationinfo.org/.

From personal experience-Dr. Greene
I stood outside the closed door of the hospital room where an adorable 6 week old baby lay all alone in her crib. As I scrubbed my hands in the sink outside the isolation room, an electronic monitor allowed me to hear her breathing peacefully.
Suddenly the quiet was shattered by a fit of coughing. And she couldn't stop. The coughs came so closely together that she couldn't catch her breath. I grabbed a mask from above the sink and, pressing it over my face, entered her room. The coughing continued. The pulsox monitor at her bedside complained insistently that her blood-oxygen levels were dropping too. The EKG monitor sounded an alarm that her heart rate was dropping. And she continued to cough. Even before I reached her bedside I could see that her face was turning blue. She began to vomit.
Moments later the peace had returned. Her various monitors beeped tranquilly; the coughing spasm was over. This little girl with pertussis survived, but she had many more weeks of coughing spasms before she could return home to her parents.

Pertussis, or whooping cough, which once ravaged children around the world, is again on the rise.

Pertussis is highly contagious
You or your child have been exposed if you spend a total of 5 hours in the same room with someone with the disease, or if you sit next to someone with pertussis for any length of time, or if you have any contact at all with infected mucus or saliva. Between 70 and 100 percent of susceptible people will catch pertussis if they are exposed.

Pertussis is one of the most contagious human diseases, so it is a great risk to those who are unvaccinated. Pertussis will develop in 90% of unvaccinated children living with someone with pertussis, and in 50% to 80% of unvaccinated children who attend school or daycare with someone with pertussis. Approximately 50 out of every 10,000 people who develop pertussis die from the disease.

Who should receive the vaccine
Adults 19-64 years of age should receive a single dose of Tdap (ADACEL®) to replace a single dose of Td for booster immunization if their most recent tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine was 10 or more years earlier. Tdap may be given at an interval shorter than 10 years since the last tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine in order to protect against pertussis, especially for:

Women less than 65 years of age who are planning to become pregnant.

Adults less than 65 years of age who have or anticipate having close contact with an infant aged less than 12 months should receive a single dose of Tdap and trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine. Ideally the vaccines should be given at least 2 weeks before contact.

Health-care personnel who have direct patient contact should receive a single dose of Tdap.