Whooping Cough Overview

Whooping cough is an infectious bacterial illness that affects the respiratory passages. First described in the 1640s, whooping cough is so named because spasms of coughing are punctuated by a characteristic "whoop" when the person inhales.

Whooping cough is the most common vaccine-preventable disease among children younger than 5 years in the United States. It is also known as pertussis—the "P" in the familiar DTaP combination inoculation routinely given to children and the "p" in Tdap given to adolescents and adults.

Despite the widespread use of vaccines, whooping cough has made a comeback in recent years. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prior to the introduction of the pertussis vaccine, there was an average of 175,000 cases of whooping cough each year.

This dropped off to fewer than 3,000 cases per year in the 1980s; however, in the U.S. alone, a total of 25,827 cases of pertussis were reported in 2004. This was a huge increase compared to the only 8,296 cases reported in 2002.

The World Health Organization estimates there were over 17.6 million cases of whooping cough and 297,000 deaths worldwide in 200, making this easy-to-prevent disease one of the leading causes of illness and death. The WHO estimates that global vaccination prevented about 38.3 million cases and 607,000 deaths.