Whooping Cough

Whooping cough or pertussis, as it is called in medical parlance, is a contagious disease. Unlike some other diseases, a new born baby has no immunity to this disease, and can get it any time after birth. It commonly affects infants during the first year of their life, when it is very severe and most of the deaths due to it occur during this period. Many cases occur in children up to 5 years of age. In some cases children up to 12 years may also be affected. The disease may cause serious trouble in the lungs.

This highly infectious disease is caused by bacteria. It spreads rapidly from one child to another by droplet-infection. This is especially so during the early catarrhal stage,but once the typical spasmodic bout starts, the infectivity becomes negligible. This disease has a prolonged course of 8 to 10 weeks.

Symptoms

The disease has a catarrhal and a spasmodic stage. For the first week, the cough is like an ordinary upper respiratory catarrh. At the end of a week, it becomes spasmodic and comes in bouts, initially more often during the night, but later during the day as well. The child goes on coughing. His face becomes red and suffused, the tongue protrudes and the eyes begin to water.

At the end of the bout, the child takes a deep breath, and there is a prolonged croaking sound which is called a whoop. This sound is produced by the air entering through a partially closed glottis ( entrance to the larynx). This gives the disease its name. The child brings out a sticky secretion from his nose and mouth and very often vomits. At the end of the bout, the child lies back exhausted. Gradually, over the next three or four weeks, the bouts of cough and their duration become less and disappear in about 8 to 10 weeks from the beginning of the disease. In immunized children, the disease is mild and atypical.

Due to the severity of bouts of cough, bleeding can occur into the eyes, from the nose, the lung, and , in rare cases, into the brain, resulting in convulsions. In many young children, lung complications such as collapse of a part of the lung are common because of the thick sticky nature of the secretions blocking the passage of air to a part of the lung. Secondary infection may result in pneumonia. They may be convulsions, and, in rare cases, inflammation of the brain.

Causes

Whooping cough is caused by the micro-organisms Bordetella pertussis and Bordetella parapertussis. Of these, the first one gives the rise to more severe infections. Whooping cough is also associated with various adinoviruses,para-influenza and respiratory viruses.

The actual cause of the disease, however, is wrong feeding of children with refined and deminralised foods and absence of a sufficient quantity of fresh fruits and salad vegetables in their dietary. This results in accumulation of excessive quantities of catarrh and mucus in the child’s system. The disease is an attempt on the part of the nature to throw out this catarrh and mucus. The use of drugs to treat other diseases can also lead to whooping cough.