Thousands of parents unaware that they are carrying the life-threatening whooping cough bacterium are at risk of infecting their newborn children, experts have told a Brisbane conference.
Parents should consider being vaccinated to avoid passing the bacterium to their babies, according to a Sydney research team that has made a study of infants admitted to hospital with the illness in 2001.
Peter McIntyre, from the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit and the National Centre for Immunisation Research, said of 140 infants studied, two-thirds seemed to have caught the bacterium from an adult, most likely a parent. Four of the babies died, four had seizures and 24 developed pneumonia, the researchers reported at the annual conference of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians yesterday.
Whooping cough is a highly infectious disease characterised by coughing, which can be so violent that it can break the ribs of adults. Ten to 15 coughs often follow in quick succession before a breath is taken, producing a high-pitched whooping sound. It mostly affects infants, but can lie dormant in adults' lungs while appearing to be a nagging cough.
Professor McIntyre said that babies less than two months old were most at
risk, and parents should be vaccinated to protect their babies.