Public healthCalifornia schools struggle to vaccinate millions against whooping cough

After experiencing its worst whooping cough outbreak in more than six decades, California is taking extra precautions to ensure that children are vaccinated against the preventable disease.

In 2010 California lawmakers mandated that all children entering the seventh grade and up must have a whooping cough booster vaccine. But parents and school districts are still scrambling to get children vaccinated before the start of the Fall semester when students will be prohibited from entering a classroom without it.

According to Melinda Landau, the manager for health and family support programs at San Jose Unified School District, “If school started tomorrow, only 4,500 of our 16,000 kids would get to start.”

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial disease that is spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes. People with the disease develop severe upper respiratory infections that induce violent coughs.

The American Academy of Pediatrics explains that children with pertussis cough “until the air is gone from his/her lungs and he/she is forced to inhale with the loud ‘whooping’ sound that gives the disease its nickname.”

According to CNN, in 2010 California suffered from more than 7,800 cases of whooping cough in the worst epidemic to hit the state since 1947. The disease claimed the lives of ten children – all less than three months old.

The vaccine wears off over time and “does not protect you for life,” says Allison Patti, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making boosters necessary for adults and teens.

School districts are struggling to meet the requirements of the new California law, but many parents have not complied.

Health nurses in California estimate that only one out ten students in most school districts are vaccinated.

Eileen Obata, a district nurse with the Gilroy Unified school district, says, “It has been a huge challenge.”

Robert Schechter, a medical officer with the California Department of Public Health’s immunization branch, explains that it is the sheer number of students that make the process logistically difficult.

“There’s three million students from seventh to twelfth grade affected by the new law,” he said.

School districts are also likely to have delays in the processing of paperwork which could leave some students at home even if they have the vaccine. To ease logistical complications, school officials are urging parents to turn in their paperwork by June.

Officials are aggressively reaching out to parents with emails, phone calls, letters, and fliers.

Dr. Stephen Parodi, the chairman of infectious disease for Kaiser Permanente, Northern California, emphasized the urgency of getting children vaccinated.

“It’s extremely important to get vaccinated,” he said. “We really worry about the babies, who are at the greatest risk of dying from it.”

“It’s really scary for parents. Their babies can go through periods where they stop breathing,” said Anjuli Mehrotra, a pediatrician and adjunct clinical faculty member at Stanford University.

In 2010, 547 babies less than six months old were hospitalized in California.