Family who lost infant to whooping cough seek to improve pubic health communications during epidemics

[Emily]

This was on Seattle's KING5 television news tonight. The mention of a CDC announcement about vaccine effectiveness is only in the video report. This is the result of the study the CDC just did in WA state.

On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and the Washington Department of Health plan to hold a 9 a.m. PT briefing...

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A hint may be in news in the article that, "The hardest hit group is children between the ages of 10 and 13."


http://shotbyshot.org/pertussis/kaliahs-story/

"Unlike most teenage pregnancies mine was no accident; my sweet baby girl was planned....

In the hospital, the doctor noticed I had a slight cough. I told her I?d had it for about a week. That night, my cough started to get worse. Still, nobody seemed too concerned about it. The doctors thought I was probably tired after labor."

The next nine days everything was going pretty great. I still had my cough but it hadn?t gotten any worse. When Kaliah was about 10 days old I heard her sneeze.

The doctor asked about our symptoms. Then, he told me we ?didn?t have the symptoms of whooping cough and that we appeared fine.?

The baby died. The family is promoting a bill to just simply have DOH let people (this would include doctors) know during an epidemic that whooping cough vaccine can wear off after only 5 years. Kaliah's mother had been vaccinated just 5 years before her baby was born.