By Melanie Markley
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2006 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
Robbie Moskowitz thought whooping cough was one of those diseases that childhood vaccines had eradicated in the civilized world years ago.
Then her daughter came down with it when she was 14. Alyssa couldn’t go 30 minutes without having a severe coughing fit, and the illness lingered for three to four months while she was a freshmen at Alief’s Taylor High School.
“As parents, her dad and I felt totally helpless because there was nothing we could do to comfort her or lessen the severity of it,” Moskowitz said. “And this went on 24 hours a day.”
Pertussis, or whooping cough, is on the rise in Houston and elsewhere, and city officials are urging parents during this back-to-school season to get their adolescent and teenage children vaccinated with a new booster shot that first hit the market last year.
Although young children must be immunized for whooping cough before they start school, doctors say the vaccine is only effective for about 10 years, putting adolescents and older people at risk for catching the disease.
Diagnosis improved
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, reported cases of whooping cough in Harris County increased from 27 in 1999 to 85 last year.
Nationwide, known incidents of whooping cough climbed from 7,580 in 2001 to 11,647 in 2003.
“Most people think this is an illness from years gone by and that it’s not an issue anymore,” said Dr. David Persse, Houston’s director of emergency medical services. “Unfortunately, that’s not true.”
Persse said whooping cough has always been around, but more cases are likely being reported because of better diagnostic techniques that can differentiate the disease from other respiratory ailments with similar symptoms.
Although whooping cough can make people feel miserable, it’s usually not fatal for older children and adults unless it triggers complications. No one in Houston has died from whooping cough in the last five years, Persse said.
Still, local and federal officials say adolescents and older people should get a booster shot that includes the whooping cough vaccine with vaccines for tetanus and diphtheria.
For one thing, they say, keeping adults and older children free of whooping cough will better protect infants who have not yet started or completed their series of shots and are more at risk of dying from the disease.
“It’s called a nuisance disease, but somebody who has four or five months of coughing that is so disruptive wouldn’t call it that,” said Dr. Katrina Kretsinger, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
No one needs to tell that to Alyssa Moskowitz, who is now 18 and heading to the University of Texas to study advertising.
“It was not at all a fun thing to go through, especially because it lasted for so long,” she said.