No whooping cough deaths in California in one whole year

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJan 24 2012

According to health officials this Tuesday, California did not suffer a single death from whooping cough in 2011, the first such year since 1991.

The news comes after the state experienced a whooping cough epidemic in 2010 when 9,000 were infected. Most vulnerable to the disease are infants too young to be fully immunized. Ten babies died after exposure from adults or older children. The last year in which no one died was 1991, when the state recorded just 249 cases of pertussis.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis cases dropped to 3,000 last year and authorities were waiting to see how this year goes before declaring the epidemic over. “Everything seems to indicate we're heading in that direction,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Gil Chavez.

Officials feel it is public awareness that has made this possible. Apart from that there are other factors like faster diagnosis and a new state law requiring that middle and high school students get a booster shot before starting school. At the peak of the epidemic, doctors were urged to spot whooping cough early, send infected babies to the hospital and promptly treat those diagnosed. The California Department of Public Health also gave out free vaccines to hospitals and aired public service announcements in English and Spanish.

“We worked very hard on that and I think it was successful,” said pediatrician Dr. James Cherry of the University of California, Los Angeles. “People rallied and got vaccinated and it made a huge difference,” Chavez said.

In Orange County, 98 percent of roughly 230,571 students were vaccinated, said Pamela Kahn, health and wellness coordinator for the county's department of education. The remainder opted out for personal belief or medical reasons. “That was way higher than we had even hoped for,” Kahn said. “If you get them at this age and nip this in the bud, you're providing herd immunity to the rest of the county. This massive vaccination effort in California certainly stopped a lot of the disease in its tracks.”

Whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial disease spread by coughs and sneezes and in rare cases can be fatal. It begins as a cold but leads to severe coughing that can last for weeks. A 2009 study in the journal Pediatrics found that children who don't get vaccinated against whooping cough are 23 times more likely to get the disease than vaccinated kids. Among those vaccinated, authorities recommend a booster shot for older children and teens to guard against the vaccine wearing off.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention applauded California's rapid response and vaccination efforts, said Alison Patti, a program manager. Pertussis is cyclical, so a drop in infections was expected as the disease made its way through the population. But efforts to accelerate and expand vaccination certainly helped.