Kelsey Layton
September 8, 2010
11:05 PM
An outrageous epidemic of the Whooping cause has struck Santa Clara, and San Mateo recently. It is said that this has been the worse bout of it in centuries, and because of the officials are making more efforts to help. The whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a respiratory tract infection that causes spells of severe coughs. Schools are sending out packets to families, and the public health departments are even now hosting free vaccinations in the area. The epidemic is hitting the area hard in all aspects. The amount of cases are reaching exceeding numbers. As of August 30, 2010, the state has reported almost 3,600 cases of the whooping cough. The amount has almost increased by 7 since the 501 cases reported at the same time last year. All ages are getting hit with the whooping cough, most though of a young age. Eight infants under the age of 3 months have died in CA this year, 132 18 and younger aged children have been reported since August 31st, 13 of them being hospitalized that were younger than 6 months. This is a problem because it is easy to diagnosis in adults but not so much in children, especially young children because it is hard to recognize symptoms. Children are suppose to recieve the first 5 DTap vaccinations prior to kindergarden to help against this problem. The state is taking major issues to help control this epidemic at the time.
In this article, while reading i could not help but to think about the 'epidemic' the the united states had just gone through over the past year, this being the swine flu. I think that the 2 problems have similar stories. Something that made me really debate was about how the children are the most common to have this disease and that they are the group hardest to diagnose because you cant tell if they are sick. For example you are sending you child to a day care with a young child that doesnt know how to adequetely tell you that they are sick. Then that caused that child to spread the illness to other children too. I think that there needed to be a new vaccination to help prevent against this, if this illness is an ongoing problem or something to those means. Do we really want children spreading a illness like this, and getting horribly ill?
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_16015705?nclick_check=1
1 comment:
This, I believe, is a scary subject. Just like how the Swine Flu spread all over America, anything that is contagious like this and can result in death is a very serious matter. I understand where you are coming from about the children. Because i worked at a day care over the summer, it was very apparent that when one child got sick, so did another, then another, then so on.
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