Whooping cough: an infant died from the disease in Nice

This tragedy reminds us of the importance of vigilance and vaccination as whooping cough has been raging in France since the start of the year. A three-week-old infant died from this highly contagious bacterial infection in Nice last week.

Whooping cough: death of a baby in Nice

It’s the newspaper Nice morning who revealed the sad news. Last week, four infants suffering from whooping cough were treated by Nice hospitals. The youngest, aged three weeks, died despite treatment.

According to the regional daily, only one baby has recovered enough to be able to return home, the other two babies are still in intensive care.

Faced with this tragedy, health professionals once again remind us of the seriousness of the disease in toddlers. “Whooping cough in older children and adults causes difficulty breathing and coughing, while in infants it can cause respiratory pauses and even cardio-respiratory arrest”explains Doctor Christophe Batard, pediatrician and member of the French Association of Outpatient Pediatrics on BFM.

Whooping cough: 70 cases since the start of the year

Public Health France warned on April 18 against “a greater resumption of the circulation of whooping cough in recent months in mainland France”. The organization explains that it observed in particular a “clear increase in cluster cases”.

“Since the start of 2024, around twenty grouped cases (or clusters) have been reported to Public Health France in 8 French regions versus 2 grouped cases in a single region (Île-de-France) for set of the year 2023″specifies the report.

Thus, in the 1st quarter of 2024, the health authorities recorded 70 cases in France. “It is a disease that occurs in waves and we find ourselves between last year 2023 and the first months of 2024 facing an extremely significant resurgence”confirms Professor Yves Buisson, epidemiologist and member of the Academy of Physicians, interviewed by BFM.

Public Health France specifies that “the French situation is not comparable with that of our European neighbors and across the Atlantic who have reported several hundred cases per week since the last quarter of 2023”, but it calls for vigilance and respect for barrier gestures with patients. Furthermore, she recommends vaccination, “the only means of protection against whooping cough”.

She recommends:

• early primary vaccination of infants as soon as they are old enough to be vaccinated, that is to say from the age of 2 months, and the administration of iterative boosters at 6 years, 11-13 years and until adulthood (25 years with the possibility of catching up until age 39);
• vaccination of pregnant women, recommended from the second trimester of pregnancy, favoring the period between 20 and 36 weeks of amenorrhea;
• in the absence of vaccination of the mother during pregnancy, vaccination of the mother postpartum and of people likely to be in close contact with the infant during its first six months of life (so-called cocooning strategy) .