Whooping cough is a disease of the past that has been controlled with the arrival of the vaccine (in Spain in 1965) and currently should be eradicated, but unfortunately it sounds again in recent years.
It seems incredible that in 2015 news such as the death of a 15-day-old baby from whooping cough, a very contagious disease whose cases have increased markedly in recent years, not only in poor countries, where it kills hundreds of thousands of children, but also in developed countries because of the decline in vaccination rates.
The boy was admitted on October 16 at the Maternal and Child Hospital of Malaga and died four days later due to complications caused by the disease. The baby was not yet vaccinated, since the first dose is given at two months of life.
What is whooping cough?
Pertussis is a disease caused by bacteria Bordetella pertussis which is spread by respiratory tract, by respiratory droplets exhaled when breathing and speaking and by hand contact.
It begins as a normal cold, but in the following days and weeks it worsens and seems to never end. It's coughing without stopping, coughing that never stops, depleting the baby and can cause respiratory failure, cyanosis (blue color due to lack of oxygen), and even death. Children under one year are those who suffer the most serious forms of this disease. The smaller, the more serious.
Antibiotics can help control the disease if they start right away. The problem is that, as the first symptoms are the same as a normal cold, the diagnosis is usually late, when the cough is already persistent.
Whooping cough vaccine
Whooping cough vaccine part of the hexavalent vaccine (together with tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis B, etc.) and is given to babies at 2 months of life, and it is re-administered at 4 and 6 months, to the 18 months and again to 4-6 years.
The vaccine has a very limited protection. That is why it is administered so often, for that reason the AEP recommends repeating it at 11-12 years and also recommends it in pregnant women, to cover the period from birth to two months of life that the first dose would be administered.
Vaccinate pregnant women, a good solution
Since the newborn cannot be vaccinated until two months, a good solution that is being studied is to generalize vaccinate all pregnant women from whooping cough and thus transmit the antibodies to the baby through the placenta.
In Spain, the administration of this vaccine depends on the community in which you live. Vaccination of pregnant women, which should be done between week 27-28 and 36 of gestation, is incorporated into the vaccination schedules of Asturias, the Canary Islands, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Extremadura, Navarra and the Basque Country.
The saddest thing about this case is that the mother's gynecologist recommended that the vaccine be applied during pregnancy, she tried to buy it in pharmacies, but did not get it, and even tried unsuccessfully to be administered in a center of health.
Studies conducted to analyze the effect of vaccination in pregnant women and after childbirth have shown that when women are vaccinated during pregnancy, cases of whooping cough decrease by up to 33%, hospitalizations up to 38% and deaths up to 39%.
On the other hand, if women are vaccinated after childbirth, cases decrease by 20%, hospitalizations by 18% and deaths by 16%.
For the pregnant woman it is a safe vaccine, which does not affect the development of the baby and protect the baby during the first two months of life, a period that, if contagion occurs, can cause serious complications in babies and even death, as unfortunately has happened in this case. Something that should not have happened.
