2024-07-06 04:30:06
Whooping cough has returned in France and is one of the most severe epidemic outbreaks of the last thirty years. Seventeen people have died since January 1, including thirteen children. Twelve of them were less than two months old, and one was four years old. according to data from the Public Health of France published on Friday May 28. SOS Médecins also reported, on Monday, an increase in actions due to cases of whooping cough in all age groups (+ 18%).
The disease, a highly contagious respiratory infection caused by bacteria Bordetella pertussisin fact it has never disappeared since it was widespread in France, but such a level of mortality has not been observed for decades.
“We feel that the death rate is very high”, notes Julie Toubiana, vice head of the CNR for whooping cough and other bordetelloses, while emphasizing that there are already news inaccuracies, as the disease is not under mandatory reporting. To compare, French researchers estimated in 2015 that 37 children died between 1996 and 2012 from whooping cough. The peak of the 2012 epidemic has already passed.
How to explain such an outbreak? The post-Covid-19 renaissance effect linked to restrictions and the wearing of masks is associated with the normal course of the disease, which causes long epidemics every three to five years. The two combined events affect people who are not sufficiently immunized.
Maternal immunity
“We know that none of the mothers of the children who died had been vaccinated during their pregnancy”, warns François Vié Le Sage, pediatrician in Aix-les-Bains (Savoie) and head of the vaccination group within the French Association of Ambulatory Pediatrics. The four-year-old has not yet received the mandatory vaccinations since 2018.
Maternal immunization is the only way to protect newborns: the mother produces antibodies, which can be transmitted to her fetus through the placenta from the fifth month of pregnancy. The baby is also born with a level of antibodies – which will protect him for six months – that is higher than his mother’s.
Inheritance of antibodies is important, because babies cannot be vaccinated before they are 2 months old, their immune system is not very developed. “And the child was really protected two weeks after the second dose of the vaccine, injected when he was four months old”, adds François Vié Le Sage. Vaccination of pregnant women against whooping cough has only been recommended since 2022 and is in limited use by doctors.
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