‘I don’t have a grandson anymore’: Adelaide grandma urges check of whooping cough vaccine status
A leading infectious diseases paediatrician is warning of a whooping cough outbreak as national data points to a surge of cases this summer.
The caution comes as an Adelaide grandmother pleads for people to take heed and check their vaccination status, after losing her only grandson to the illness when he was just four weeks old.
Known as the “100-day cough” or pertussis, it is a highly contagious bacterial infection that attacks the airways, causing uncontrollable coughing that can result in a “whoop”-like sound and difficulty breathing.
Professor Robert Booy said rates of the disease, which increases in prominence as the weather heats up and typically peaks every four years, had tripled this year, compared to last.
National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System statistics show there have been 1541 confirmed cases of whooping cough to date in 2023, compared to 481 in 2022.
“Whooping cough is very severe in newborns where in the first few weeks and months of life it can lead to pneumonia, to hospitalisation and even death,” the University of Sydney child health expert said.
“Whooping cough follows a fairly predictable pattern … we’ve seen years when whooping cough infections in Australia have neared 40,000.
“(Due to social distancing during Covid) it has been eight years since our last peak, so we are due one and we are observing that now, with numbers going up rapidly.”
A newborn’s immunity is boosted when its mum is vaccinated during pregnancy with babies given the first of a five-dose schedule at two months.
It is recommended adults be vaccinated every “10 to 15” years with SA Health’s Notifiable Disease Report noting “cases of whooping cough have been recognised in adults and adolescents due to waning immunity”.
The report also states “whooping cough is highly infectious, spreading across 70 to 100 per cent of susceptible household contacts and 50 to 80 per cent of susceptible school contacts”.
Elizabeth Park schoolteacher Julie Hughes met her only grandson, Riley, for the first time in 2015 – when he was in intensive care at a Perth hospital, suffering from whooping cough.
He died several hours later.
“I got a call in the middle of the night to say he’d taken a turn for the worse and flew out on the next flight,” the now 66-year-old said.
“It was the most devastating and traumatic thing, I have never seen anything so horrific in my whole life.”
Breaking down in tears she recalls how Riley’s parents – her son Greg and his wife Catherine – took their second child to hospital when he became “snuffly” and didn’t want to feed.
“He started to deteriorate … he was christened and everyone got to hold him before he died,” she said.
“You don’t ever get over it … I don’t have a grandson anymore.”
Little Riley’s death was the catalyst for bringing the maternal vaccination for whooping cough to Australia with his parents teaming up with passionate immunisation advocates to establish a not-for-profit charity, The Immunisation Foundation of Australia.