Doctors raise alarm on whooping cough
HEALTH officials have alerted parents and carers to a case of whooping cough at Cairns State High School.
It comes amid a spike in cases of the highly infectious disease across the Far North.
There have been 37 notifications of whooping cough in the Cairns health district so far this year, up from 10 last year, according to the latest health figures from the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service.
Cairns Tropical Public Health Services director Dr Richard Gair confirmed one of the cases had been identified at Cairns State High School.
He said the disease could cause sickness at any age, particularly for children under one year of age.
“The symptoms are a persistent cough that may occur in bouts, often with a breathless ‘whoop’ at the end,” he said.
“Someone with whooping cough is very infectious only for the first three weeks of sickness, but could pass the illness on to an infant or baby at home. Whooping cough and milder respiratory infections often spread in schools.”
He said if children developed troublesome or persistent coughs, they should be taken straight to a doctor, with the GP told the child might have had contact with someone with whooping cough.
“Whooping cough can only spread through coughing, Dr Gair said.
“People in the first few weeks of the illness should stay away from school until they have completed at least five days of an antibiotic. This is important to prevent further spread of the sickness.”
Dr Gavin Le Sueur at the Cairns 24-Hour Medical Centre said he had noticed a rise in the number of patients needing to be treated for whooping cough in recent weeks.
He urged people with chronic coughs to see their GP immediately.
“Don’t go back into the workplace,” he said. “Don’t go into offices and spread it.”
He said adults who had been immunised as children against the disease might need booster doses to maintain immunity.
“It’s one of the vaccines, for which herd immunity is a critical component,” he said.
“It’s the number of people that are covered that determines the outbreaks that we get.
“As soon as we reduce the percentage numbers below a critical mass, the whooping cough enters the community and we keep getting waves of outbreaks.”
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