Whooping cough kills baby

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Whooping cough has claimed the life of a baby and a doctor warns she is unlikely to be the last death from the disease this year.

The girl was admitted to KidzFirst at Middlemore Hospital on June 22. She died days later in the Starship children's hospital, where she had been transferred after deteriorating.

New Zealand has entered a new whooping cough epidemic this year - the last was in 1999-2001, when three infants died.

The 324 cases notified from this January to March was more than twice the number in the same three months last year.

Whooping cough causes prolonged bouts of coughing that can end in vomiting and, in infants, a temporary cessation of breathing.

Spread by coughed airborne droplets, it affects people of all ages, particularly babies under 1.

The KidzFirst's head of paediatrics, Dr Wendy Walker, said yesterday the baby who died was less than 3 months old. She came in with a bad cough and was transferred after deteriorating fast.

It was the first death she knew of in the current epidemic.

Dr Liz Segedin, a Starship intensive care specialist who cared for the girl, said little babies suffering from the disease were often untreatable.

Antibiotics could kill the bacteria that caused it, but it was a "toxin-mediated disease" and the damage could continue, particularly in young, prematurely-born babies. They could develop high pressure in lung blood vessels, and pneumonia.

"Once they head down that pathway there's very little we can do and there's a huge mortality ... We will probably lose another this year, given the epidemic."

Young babies typically caught the bug before they received their first vaccination against it at 6 weeks of age, or between it and their second dose at 3 months.

"The only way to fix it is to improve the immunisation rate within the country. If everyone else isn't carrying it, they can't give it to those little babies."