[Intro music]
[Baby coughing]
Mother >> I'd say whooping cough has devastated our family.
That it seems to have come out from nowhere and we had a very healthy beautiful little
baby for 4 weeks, and then after 5 days in hospital we had a dead daughter.
And for us it has been a journey of shock about what this disease can do.
We saw the ferocity of the cough, how violent it was, how every part of her body was shuddering with it.
That's where we started to think why don't people know that this is what something called
whooping cough can actually do, why don't people know how vaccination works,
why don't adults know they need a booster?
Expert >> You cough and cough so much with with full-blown whooping cough,
that you basically can't catch your breath. And that's the whoop, you know,
because you have to catch your breath at the end of so much coughing,
and in fact adults can cough so much that they can fracture a rib,
and of course children can cough so much that the blood vessels in their eyes burst.
But what we're really worried about is the tiny babies that are too young to be immunised.
Mother >> She was born perfectly healthy, full term, we brought her home and
she was a very healthy little baby feeding well, putting on weight.
I think the most heartbreaking thing for us has been that it is easily preventable, and
we never got that chance to protect her.
Female voice >> Any wise words for your third born?
Father >> Don't date 'til you 30. [Laughs]
Expert >> The best protection against whooping cough remains
being vaccinated and even though the vaccine isn't perfect, it certainly prevents
severe disease, and of course the severe disease is what we're most keen to avoid.
[Baby coughs]
The first dose is at 2 months, although it's recently been recommended that you can bring
that back to 6 weeks to get in as early as possible. Then it's 4 months, then at 6 months.
The next dose has been at 4 years of age, and we've recently recommended bringing that
back to 3.5 because we've been seeing more children getting whooping cough
in that kind of 3 year age group. And then the next time you you get the vaccine currently
is as a teenager somewhere between the ages of 11 and about 15,
depending on which state you're in.
[Child coughs]
No matter what happens, you get the illness, you get the vaccine,
and you can wane, and you can be susceptible again.
Interviewer >> Tell me about the thinking around immunising pregnant mothers.
Expert >> There's been interest in this for a long time, and just of more recent times, I guess
with the new vaccines which are associated with fairly minimal side effects,
and we've been recommending adults be immunised.
It was a fairly natural step to look again at the possibility that if you could give
the vaccine to mothers just before the baby was born, the baby would
have high levels of antibodies from the mother and would be protected
in that vital sort of month or two where when we get deaths
that's when we're getting them, we getting them in those
really young babies before 2 months of age.
We don't have information from 100,000 women, or even from 1000 women to definitely show
that it prevents your baby dying of whooping cough, but we certainly have strong reasons
to suspect that if you're born to a mother with high antibodies levels and you've had
high antibody levels passed on to you from your mother that you you will be protected
at least for a couple of months, and at least until you can get back vital first or second
dose of the the childhood vaccine in.
Mother >> She had two very excited older siblings and a loving family around her.
We do not know how she caught it, and it haunts us on a daily basis.
Father >> Unfortunately whooping cough and all the issues relating to it
are something we were not aware of until she died.
Expert >> With whooping cough there's these 3 classic phases.
There what's called the catarrhal phase, which is basically like a cold, and then at
some point that moves into the start of a cough and then the cough gets progressively
worse, and the reason you know it's whooping cough is that it keeps going
and it keeps going and it keeps going
and if you have something like asthma as well or some other chest trouble
you can potentially be coughing for months and months.
Interviewer >> If it starts like any other sniffle then how do you identify it?
Expert >> Well you can't, at the beginning, but what should raise your suspicion is if you know
that a lot of whooping cough around, particularly if you know you've been in contact with someone
who has a cough, and particularly if you're the parent of a very young baby, then even
very minimal symptoms would be enough to get tested and be concerned, but normally of course
you can't really tell until you get something which is a bit more obvious.
We've discovered particularly adults can actually be carrying the whooping cough bug,
and never get a cough.
[Baby coughs]
If you want to protect your baby, and thinking particularly of young babies,
what you can do at the moment is to ensure your baby gets
their first dose of vaccine as soon as possible -- so that's 6 weeks, and
ensure they get the next doses on time. And ensure that you as the mother,
the father, if you're visiting the grandparents and if you're having babysitters or other
people in close contact with the child, the best thing you can do at the moment to protect
them is ensure that you and all the other people in close contact are also immunised.
[Music]