By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter
Reported cases of whooping cough nearly quadrupled to more than 4000 nationwide last year, and doctors see no sign of the epidemic waning.
Cases were still coming through pretty consistently, Dr Cameron Grant, a paediatrician at the Starship children's hospital in Auckland, said last night. "Australia had [a whooping cough epidemic] in the 1990s that went on for six or seven years and had a number of deaths.
"It was really quite scary.
"Whether the same thing will happen here or not, I don't know.
"Most here last 18 to 24 months."
This epidemic began in Southland in mid-1999 and swept up the country. Provisional figures from the Institute of Environmental and Science Research (ESR) show that 4144 cases of whooping cough were reported last year, compared with 1046 in 1999 and 158 in 1998.
Dr Chris Bullen, of the Auckland Public Health Protection Service, said many more cases were probably not reported because older children and adults with the illness often did not have the "whoop" - a sharp intake of breath - at the end of coughing spasms.
The illness has an incubation period of one to three weeks, after which symptoms can include a runny nose, sore eyes and a mild cough.
The cough rapidly worsens and can last up to 10 weeks, with uncontrollable coughing fits that induce vomiting. It affects babies worst and can cause them to stop breathing, suffer brain damage, and even to die.
A bacterial infection, it is highly infectious from coughed or sneezed droplets. Health authorities urge full vaccination of children with free injections at ages six weeks and three, five and 15 months. They blame the epidemic on our low childhood vaccination rate of about 70 per cent, compared with 90 per cent in Britain and the United States.
Antibiotics can help reduce infectiousness and the length of the illness, but only if given warning early enough.
Dr Grant was aware of only one death in this epidemic - the eight-week-old Waikato baby who died last February - but he knew of two babies at Starship who suffered brain damage.
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Early vaccination critical in whooping cough epidemic
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