Shot season
Whooping cough seen this winter

A stock of immunization drugs is organized inside a refrigerator at the Cibola County Health Office Thursday. The office offers a variety of immunizations including tetanus, chicken pox and hepatitus during a clinic every Tuesday. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Immunizations in the form of vaccines are important to the health of everyone, Dr. Naomi Kistin, state medical director for public health for Cibola and McKinley counties, said.

Vaccines are given to children beginning soon after birth and through 6 years of age to help them develop immunities to illnesses such as polio, measles, diphtheria, influenza and whooping cough.

It is the last one that has health officials concerned, however.

“We are seeing whooping cough (pertussis) present in adolescents and adults during the winter months. When those people are around infants (2 months or younger), and those infants have not had their pertussis vaccine, that child can contract whooping cough and become seriously ill or die,” Kistin said.

“Pertussis is a bacterial infection that creates a staccato type of cough where the individual cannot breathe. When finished with the series of coughs, the individual then needs to take in a deep breath and it sounds like a ‘whoop,’” she said. One can have whooping cough without the “whoop” though.

Kistin said the pertussis vaccine, given to infants at the age of 2 months has been determined by medical researchers to wear off as those children enter adolescence.

There is now a booster vaccine, given as an injection in the arm, like most shots these days, that can restart the immune system for pertussis and eliminate to possibility of spreading the disease, she said.

“Even grandparents who are going to be around infants should ask their doctor whether they should receive the booster shot or not.

“We are learning more and more about vaccines every day,” she said.

There is a set schedule of immunizations that children are given and there is a reason this schedule has been set the way it is, Kistin said.

Researchers have found out when the child’s immune system can react to certain vaccinations and begin immunizing that child as they reach that age. Vaccines given too soon as the child ages shortly after birth will do no good.

There have been some populations of people, like an entire family, that decide not to get their children the vaccines they need, Kistin said. Those children are at risk of developing illnesses if exposed to the diseases by people who are carrying them.

“People used to develop immunization to a disease by contracting it and living through it,” she said.

As medical research advances, more and more is being found out about how to make vaccines safer and better, she said.

Pertussis is an example. It has only been within the last couple of years scientists have discovered it wears off beginning in adolescence.

Most of the vaccines given to infants are given during the first six months of age: “We want to get vaccine to infants as soon as possible so the immune system start working,” she said.