PD EDITORIAL: Cough crisis

<p>Here's a statistic that should have parents gasping.</p><p>Last year at this time, health care officials were reporting 219 cases of whooping cough across the state. This year, the number has more than quadrupled to 910. Five infants, all under the age of three months, have already died, causing health officials to declare a statewide epidemic.</p><p>And the worst is yet to come. The peak months for whooping cough, a highly contagious respiratory infection that often produces a high-pitched “whooping” sound in infants, won't come until July and August.</p><p>This rise in cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, in recent years is no surprise. In 1996, there were only four deaths from whooping cough nationwide. Today, pertussis is the only vaccine-preventable disease causing a rising number of deaths in the United States.</p><p>Sonoma County children are particularly susceptible as the rate of pertussis immunizations for local children has been dropping at an alarming rate. The percentage of fully immunized county students entering kindergarten declined from 91.6 percent in 2002 to 87.7 percent in 2008. In some local school districts, the rate is below 60 percent.</p><p>Many of these children have not been immunized by choice — their parents' — due to fears about the vaccine, which is usually administered along with tetanus, diphtheria and polio vaccines. But studies show that those fears are unfounded. Worse, the declining number of immunizations threatens the “herd immunity” — the overall communal benefits of widespread inoculations — which protect the unvaccinated and vaccinated alike, to a point.</p><p>Equally concerning is that the pertussis vaccine wears off over time and fewer older children, as well as adults, are getting booster shots. Health care officials are encouraging booster shots for anyone age 11 or over and for those who care for, or live with, newborns.</p><p>Perhaps the only positive of this outbreak is that it has underscored a glaring omission in our state health and safety code that may be corrected. California is one of only 10 states that does not require children entering middle school to have a pertussis booster shot. This makes no sense.</p><p>Assemblyman Juan Arambula, I-Fresno, has authored a bill that would require incoming seventh-graders to have their booster shots for pertussis. But his bill, AB 354, has run into severe opposition from the anti-vaccine movement and has languished since it was submitted in February 2009.</p><p>It's due for a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday. We encourage senators to move this forward. In addition to saving lives, the state Department of Public Health has estimated that it would save the state $12 million in treatment costs. That's nothing to cough at.</p>