Whooping Cough

The mainstay of prevention lies in the mass immunization program which begins in the United States when an infant is two months old. The pertussis vaccine, most often given as one immunization together with diphtheria and tetanus, has greatly reduced the incidence of whooping cough. Unfortunately, there has been some concern about serious neurologic side effects from the vaccine itself. This concern led huge numbers of parents in England, Japan, and Sweden to avoid immunizing their children, which in turn led to major epidemics of disease in those countries. Multiple carefully constructed research studies, however, have disproved pertussis vaccine as the cause of neurologic damage.