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Whooping cough outbreak in 2010 tied to vaccine refusal
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| Contributor | Homegrown Democrat |
| Last Edited | Homegrown Democrat Oct 02, 2013 05:00am |
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| Category | Study |
| Author | Kristen V. Brown |
| News Date | Tuesday, October 1, 2013 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Three years ago, the worst whooping cough outbreak in more than half a century sickened over 9,000 people and claimed the lives of 10 infants.
Public health officials suspected the resurgence was linked with an increase in vaccine refusals. A new study now offers validity for that hunch, finding that personal belief exemptions were one of several factors responsible for the state’s resurgence of whopping cough in 2010.
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a highly contagious respiratory illness that can cause severe illness and death in babies.
In the study, published yesterday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers compared the locations of 2010 whooping cough outbreaks with vaccine exemptions filed by parents of children entering kindergarten that were related to personal beliefs, rather than the child’s health. Areas with a cluster of exemptions were about 2.5 times more likely to also have a cluster of outbreaks. In the map, you can see that in some parts of the Bay Area, outbreak clusters overlapped with exemption clusters. |
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