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Friday, January  10, 2003. Posted: 11:38:10 (AEDT)

US whooping cough outbreak shows vaccine need

US health officials say an outbreak of whooping cough has sickened 24 adults in Illinois, saying the incident illustrates how the childhood disease is making a comeback in the United States.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, can make small children and infants seriously ill and once killed 9,000 people every year.

Relatively benign in adults, whooping cough can cause high fever and pneumonia in babies.

Now infants routinely receive a combined pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus vaccine.

But immunity wears off by the time a child becomes a teenager and health officials say whooping cough is on the rise.

Last year, 8,296 cases were reported, the highest number of reported cases since 1967, Dr Gregory Huhn said, an epidemiologist with the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) said 62 young children died of whooping cough in the United States between 1997 and 2000.

Dr Huhn and the CDCP reported on 24 cases of whooping cough among adults working at an oil refinery in the Chicago area an among people living nearby.

It is the only vaccine-preventable disease on the rise in the United States, Dr Huhn said.

This means it is important to make sure infants get their vaccinations on time - as adults and teens could infect them, he said.

"The important point is that adults are reservoirs for pertussis so any exposed children, especially those that are not vaccinated and especially for children below age of 6 weeks, those are extremely vulnerable populations," Dr Huhn said.

Before pertussis shots were available, nearly all children developed whooping cough.

In the United States an average of 200,000 cases were reported every year, with as many as 9,000 deaths.

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