Whooping Cough in California claims three infants

Here we go again. Whooping cough also known as pertussis, is a huge problem in Mexico so it would only stand to reason that it would become a huge problem here in California, where illegal aliens waltz across the border day and night. All the infants that died in California were Latino.

New epidemics are cropping up all the time here in So Cali. Whooping cough and Tuberculosis have been on the rise for years. Coming to a neighborhood near you soon.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is on high alert as it tries to control a whooping cough epidemic that state officials say has already produced 3,834 “confirmed, probable, and suspect cases” of the disease since the the start of 2010.

By this time in 2009, only 530 cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, had been reported for the year in California. But as of Tuesday, the state has recorded seven times as many cases for this year. With three months left in 2010, California is on track to exceed the single-year record number of whooping cough cases recorded in 1958.

There have been eight whooping cough deaths in California this year, all of them of infants under 3 months old. Alameda County has not reported any deaths, and to date has only reported eight hospitalizations, but the threat is still very real to those in the Bay Area.

Due to the highly contagious nature of whooping cough and its strikingly similar symptoms to those of the common cold, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the CDPH have issued new vaccination recommendations.

Both health agencies are recommending that every California citizen over age 10 receive the whooping cough booster shot, or Tdap, to help increase immunity in the adult population and stop the spread of the disease.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inoakland/detail?entry_id=72013#ixzz0zQs0bwf7