| Who catches whooping cough? | You are at www.whoopingcough.net |
|
|---|---|---|
Home page |
It all depends on the environment you live in. When there is no immunization against whooping cough in a population, most will have had the illness by the time they are five years old and will remain immune for the rest of their lives because the illness builds up good antibody levels, and because these antibodies are being boosted by frequent contact with the organism. But we now live in an environment where most children are immunized early in life against whooping cough, giving them important protection against it at an age when it would otherwise be so easily spread by them to their newborn unimmunized siblings whom it could kill. We must remember that immunization has drastically reduced the impact of whooping cough on our populations. So nowadays in developed communities there are five groups of people who are relatively susceptible. (And come to think about it, it is almost everybody)
The bottom line |
|