Whooping Cough Outbreak in South Australia

It appears that increased screening for swine flu has led to the discovery of a potential whooping cough outbreak in South Australia.  According to SA Health there have been 3500 notifications for whooping cough this year which is a significant increase over preceding years.

While health authorities view the increase as in increase in infection rate, they also believe the large increase is due to increased screening that would not have occurred in previous years.  AMA SA president Andrew Lavender was quoted by ABC online:

"Certainly that’s a dramatic increase and we do believe that it represents probably an increase in the infection rate in the community, but there is a large amount of that is due to increased testing and a lot of the increased testing has been associated with the prevalence of the swine flu in the community," he said.

He also stated that the rise in cases should not be cause for alarm.

Dr Ann Koehler, SA Health Communicable Disease Control branch director was quoted by Adelaide Now as saying:

…nationally there had been a "big wave" of infections. She said SA had the highest rate, although it was not clear why.

She also called for parents to be vigilant with childhood vaccination.*

It was refreshing to read Dr Koehler’s dig at homeopathy.  It seems that Medical experts are now seeing the need to combat this lunacy directly:

…Dr Koehler said SA Health was concerned about some people’s resistance to or complacency about vaccinating children. She warned homeopathic "vaccines" did not work.

"That’s wasting your money . . . you’re putting yourself, your children and other people’s children at risk," she said.

There was also this reference to anti-vaccination, or as they like to be referred to “pro choice” proponents by Dr Lavender, that made me smile:

Australian Medical Association state president Dr Andrew Lavender said people arguing against vaccination were both ignorant and arrogant.

"The people who are anti-vaccination are acting on very little information and usually relying on scare tactics . . . they are posing a risk to others," he said.

And while I a sure there are many intelligent, and well meaning people who work with the AVN (Australia Vaccination Network) it seems that aside from their conspiracy theorist leadership they attract unsavoury sorts like George Mamouzellos, perhaps the very definition of arrogance, ignorance and misogyny thrown in for good measure.

*It should be noted that the risk of contracting whooping cough comes not only from other unvaccinated children but from unvaccinated adolescents and adults(or from those adolescents and adults that have missed boosters).

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