LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Pertussis: Child
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In its early stages, pertussis is indistinguishable from the many colds common in children. However, after one or two weeks, the illness gets progressively worse. Thick mucous builds up in the lungs, triggering severe coughing spells as children try to clear their clogged up airways. Children can cough so long and hard that they literally cannot ‘catch their breath;’. Their faces turn blue when they are unable to get fresh oxygen into their system. As the coughing spell ends, children gasp for their next breath with a characteristic crowing sound, or whoop.
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* Any contacts under 7 years of age who are not up to date on their pertussis vaccination should be brought up to date with doses of DTaP using the minimum recommended intervals. Children aged 4-6 years who have completed a primary series but have not received the pertussis vaccination booster dose should be given this dose. Children under 2 months of age may receive a first dose of DTaP at six weeks of age with subsequent doses at ?4 week intervals.
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DTaP is the pertussis vaccine your teen should have received as a baby and young child. Unlike the Tdap booster shot, DTaP is stronger and given in five different shots at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 15-18 months of age, and just before starting school (age 4-6 years). It is necessary to get the DTaP vaccines as a child to help one make the antibodies that target pertussis. Antibodies are small particles created by your immune system to fight infection.
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Beginning in 1977, a sharp rise in notified cases of pertussis became apparent in certain Area Health Authorities (AHAs) in England and Wales. Over the next two years, all AHAs experienced increased rates of notifications. Overall, the notification rate during the 1977-1979 outbreak was about 4 times that of 1974-1975, with the highest rate in children aged 1-4 years (Pollard, 1980). In England and Wales, 5,000 children with pertussis were admitted to hospital (Fenichel, 1983).
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Bordetella pertussis is a strict human pathogen that is the causative agent of pertussis (whooping cough). Its natural habitat is in the human respiratory mucosa. Whooping Cough, or pertussis, is a respiratory infection in which a “whooping” sound is produced when the sufferer breathes. Pertussis kills an estimated 300,000 children annually, most of which occur in developing countries. [6]
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In 1978, a study in Tennessee showed a significant increase in deaths and injuries occurring within 24 hours after vaccination against pertussis. Shamefully, this finding merely led to a change in the way pharmaceutical companies distributed the pertussis vaccine: the lot numbers were broken up so that a particularly bad batch of the vaccine could not kill or injure a large number of children within a small geographic region, thereby making it harder for parents to trace the cause of the injuries and take preventative measures to protect their other children. In effect, by allowing drug companies to disburse lots all over the country—thereby avoiding clusterings and public notice—federal health officials demonstate that their sole concern is to “protect” the efficacy of vaccination, by avoiding public outcry.
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