COMMUNICABLE WHOOPING CAUGH AND ITS CURE

Communicable whooping cough  is a highly contagious bacterial disease caused by Bordetella pertussis. In some countries, this disease is called the 100 days' cough or cough of 100 days.The medical term for whooping cough is pertussis.

The condition usually begins with a persistent dry and irritating cough that progresses to intense bouts of coughing. These are followed by a distinctive 'whooping' noise, which is how the condition gets its name.

Other symptoms include a runny nose, raised temperature and vomiting after coughing.

The coughing can last for around three months (another name for whooping cough is the ‘hundred day cough’).

Read more about the symptoms of whooping cough.

Whooping cough is caused by a bacterium called Bordetella pertussis, which can be passed from person to person through droplets in the air from coughing and sneezing.

Prevention And Management:
People with pertussis are infectious from the beginning of the catarrhal stage (runny nose, sneezing, low-grade fever, symptoms of the common cold) through the third week after the onset of paroxysms (multiple, rapid coughs) or until 5 days after the start of effective antimicrobial treatment.A reasonable guideline is to treat people age >1 year within 3 weeks of cough onset and infants age <1 year and pregnant women (especially near-term) within 6 weeks of cough onset. If the patient is diagnosed late, antibiotics will not alter the course of the illness and, even without antibiotics, the patient should no longer be spreading pertussis. Antibiotics decrease the duration of infectiousness and thus prevent spread
Prevention by vaccination is of primary importance given the seriousness of the disease in children. Although treatment is of little direct benefit to the person infected, antibiotics are recommended because they shorten the duration of infectiousness. It is currently estimated that the disease annually affects 48.5 million people worldwide, resulting in nearly 295,000 deaths.

Whooping cough vaccination:

In the UK, all pregnant women are offered vaccination against whooping cough when they are 28-38 weeks pregnant. Getting vaccinated while you’re pregnant could help to protect your baby from developing whooping cough in its first few weeks of life.Children are vaccinated against whooping cough with the 5-in-1 vaccine at two, three and four months of age, and again with the 4-in-1 pre-school booster before starting school at the age of about three years and four months.Although the number of cases of whooping cough has fallen dramatically since vaccination began, it is still possible for children to get the infection, so having the vaccination is vital.The more people vaccinated against whooping cough the less chance there is of them passing on the infection to a young baby in which it could cause serious, and possibly fatal, complications.The effectiveness of the whooping cough vaccination may fade over time, meaning it is possible to develop the condition during adulthood if you were previously vaccinated.