Whooping cough - would you?

[rainuntilseptember]

Hoping for some advice. I'm due to travel in a week to visit family, along with my new baby who will be just under 3 months then. I've just heard that my cousin (poor lad) has whooping cough. Everyone I was planning to stay with or visit will have been exposed to this, though obviously may not have caught it. Should I cancel? I've been really looking forward to the trip but lo is top priority obviously.
TIA

Don't go. My friend's newborn twins had whooping cough in in the UK last year and nearly died. Blue light ambulances called by the GP and on other occasions by the parents in the middle of the night because they stopped breathing. The babies were a long time in NICU. One stopped breathing and needed resuscitation 40 times in one day and had a stroke from the coughing. It'll be a couple of years before they know what damage the stroke may have done. The coughing lasted months and both babies were very ill and miserable and that says nothing of the stress their parents and wider family were under.

There is loads of time for your family to get to know your little one once they're vaccinated.

There is currently no vaccine for anyone other than babies in the UK. Medication is lots less effective if it's not given early on in the infection but if it's a case of that or a little one dying then they try it.

I know everyone is excited to be meeting up but in my book it's just not worth it. You'll only worry and wouldn't it be a happier occasion to show off your little one when everyone's well and able to enjoy it? Have a great time when it happens.

Really helpful replies here, thank you. Think I'm very unlikely to go now.

Hervana, it was a bloody nightmare getting it diagnosed. I kept taking him back to the GP again and again and I knew they were writing me off as a neurotic first time mother. Then finally he actually had a coughing fit in front of one of the doctors and she immediately referred us to the hospital. He was in on supplementary oxygen for a few days because his blood sats kept dropping, but TBH it was probably the previous two weeks, when no one was listening to me, when he really needed to be in hospital.

And I'd had a c/s, too. I really don't recommend whooping cough immediately after a c/s. So I had almost literally no sleep for weeks because either I was waking myself up with my own coughing or DS was waking me up with his coughing or DS was waking me up with normal newborn stuff. And at least 50% of the time he'd have a coughing fit after he'd been fed and projectile vomit up his entire feed (I told them that as well, and specifically said "It's not just posseting; I know babies posset but this is way more than that and it's projrctile). Months later I saw the notes for that GP visit over the doctor's shoulder on the computer screen. They said "Posseting". Aaaargh.

He'd react badly to getting a normal cold for a couple of years afterwards - would always get a nasty hacking cough that would linger for weeks. But he's seven now and absolutely fine. And we were lucky to escape the problems Homebird8's friend's twins had. But I'm still angry that it was just down to luck that nothing too bad happened to him in the weeks that no one would take the problem seriously.

OP, if your mother has it then I definitely wouldn't go. she shouldn't be infectious when treated, but she could easily have infected loads of other people already. It's not worth the risk; go in a month or so instead, if you can.

Casey, her GP refused to give her antibiotics - said they'd be no use - so she hasn't been treated. He really seemed to think it wasn't a problem. I agree with the posters on this thread and we're not going - going to see if I can get our tickets transferred to half-term instead.
Really appreciate all the replies and sorry for those who've had to go through this nasty illness.

This may be of interest re whooping cough in England and Wales link

Um. Well it says 5 babies under the vacinated age have died this year from hooping cough.
Really wouldn't. I don't think I'd even have to consider whether I'd cancel, and I'm usually fairly relaxed about illnesses.

^Prof Adam Finn, from University of Bristol, said: "The current vaccination programme has reduced whooping cough in children, but also pushed it back into older age groups.

"Immunity due to vaccine does not last as long as immunity due to infection so as the number of people who have had whooping cough in the past falls, population immunity falls and rates go up.

"This is happening everywhere, not just in the UK."^

From fireice's link.

Blimey. I'm staggered. On the BBC as well. Although bit strange there's no mention from the JCVI of new strain whooping cough. I'll be reading their next set of minutes.

I think you would be wise to not go rain - hope you don't get too much grief for your decision.

Sadly, it's 6 babies in the UK who have lost their lives to whooping cough already this year. It's not just the UK though, there are massive outbreaks in the US, Australia, New Zealand and lots of other places.

In the UK there are currently no vaccines for anyone older than a baby and the effect wears off after about 10 years. This means that a lot of persistent coughs in grownups are actually whooping cough, unpleasant but not usually deadly. In babies it's different. Luckily we are in NZ at the moment and our DS's will get a booster at 11.

Visit the petition link below if you think that this is something you want to do something about.

Petition for booster whooping cough vaccines for UK teens

Is the new strain reported in Australia causing the outbreak in New Zealand? Or does the outbreak there have a different cause?

It is a huge problem in high immigrant areas here. I live in Los Angeles and they have required a whooping cough booster shot for entry into 7th grade (age 11) here for all the schools public and private.

My baby had whooping cough and it was the most frightening time in my life. I had it too and was waking every 20mins when she coughed to check she started breathing again, and often for when I coughed. Each time it felt as if I wasn't going to breath again, like I was drowning/suffocating and I was caring for a newborn whom I was terrified would die. I was told to just ring 999 each time she turned blue - which we did a couple of times, but she wasn't admitted and it was terrifying.

Definitely avoid, and definitely keep up with a vaccination programme.

(We got ours from an Australian travelling here too. Funnily enough I was the only one not vaccinated (33 and it was considered risky when I was young. I didn't know I hadn't been) and those who had didn't catch it).

There was some scare about the whooping cough vaccination in the 70's (like wakefield with the MMR) and there is a whole group of people who are not vaccinated.

My friends ds had whooping cough recently & quite bad too. She doesn't vaccinate, so it hit him hard. It was heartbreaking watching him coughing (my friend dropped her older son off at school & I could see her younger coughing in the car) & struggling to get a breath while doing so. It was hard to hear how he threw up after coughing. Then we all rallied around when said child was hospitalised after becoming severely dehydrated due to not being able to drink or keep anything down. The child was less than a yr old & they almost lost him due to the dehydration, because he became listless & non responsive. Friend only noticed this as she had to do school run & had to wake her son (she couldn't rouse him)

This was no long after a family locally (but unknown to us) lost their newborn to WC, who was too young to be vaccinated.

So I would say, as a mum whose kids are fully vaccinated, stay away! Do not expose your child to potential harm, because God forbid, if anything does happen, you will never forgive yourself.

Sofia I think that in California the largest group contracting whooping cough was children/young teens who were first batch to be vaccinated with aP rather than wP. So I think they decided it was waning vaccine immunity (hence the booster - I presume they'll introduce adult boosters as well for that group unless a longer lasting vaccination is developed).

It gets confusing though because I get the feeling some studies are moving away from waning immunity and towards new strain, but that might just be Australia (and I think the booster program worked in the States and numbers dropped, so I guess that would point towards waning immunity).

I don't know much about new strains, and neither will GPs who won't test, but I do know that very few adults in the UK who haven't actually had WC will have an immunity to it.

Here in NZ, at least it's being taken seriously by the medical establishment. My employer, with a local staff of thousands, has sent a circular around all Auckland staff alerting them to a small outbreak in one of the business units, and advising vaccination advice to be sought from our GPs. We all have to sign the circular to say we've been informed. The vaccine is available here for adults which it just isn't in the UK.

I had a bad reaction to the whooping cough vaccine as a child so my brothers weren't given it - result was that they caught it as children. But it was me, the only vaccinated one of the bunch, who caught it as an adult.

It's even more difficult to get a diagnosis if you have been vaccinated; I don't appear in the official wc statistics because I was never diagnosed (although know it was whooping cough because I gave it to DS and he was diagnosed).

The stats must be a pile of random (low) numbers. Plenty of doctors think they've never seen it and to be fair it was minimised for some years. If they've never seen it then it can't be that, especially as they're not being nagged by the local statisticians who get their data from guess who, the doctors.

It must be really tough to be a GP and have to know everything but perhaps a government driven exercise of testing all possible presentations and vaccination for teens and adults would give a better picture AND get it under control. Either that or we have to quarantine all newborns until after their immunisations are complete to protect them and nobody thinks that is fair. Or do they?

The HPA data on pertussis is here

A couple of people at a and e when we went in said they'd never seen a case before. It wasn't until they heard my baby cough and stop breathing that nearly all the staff in the area came running. The polite 'so you think . . . 'turned into rushed phoning the notifyable disease person and asking for advice.

Certainly my doctor had dismissed me on the phone, then the new doctor I saw at lie surgery, as a new mum. It wasn't until we went to a and e after she turned blue, and she was heard that we were believed.