David Masterman's List: Health

• Whooping cough is a highly contagious upper respiratory bacterial infection that causes violent and uncontrollable coughing. The disease is easily spreads fom person to person when tiny droplets containing the bacterial move through the air.
• "These days, adults are getting pertussis and some doctors are unaware of this or don't think it is possible for an adult to have this infection,"
• spreads from teenagers and adults who have lost immunity to this infection
• 2,000 percent increase in the U.S. in 2010
• killed 10 babies and sickened about 9,000 people last year in California.

• recommended that pregnant mothers get vaccinated with dTap, a vaccine to protect against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. 

   "The mother then passes her antibodies to the baby before they are born, and this helps protect the baby against getting whooping cough prior to the time that the infant gets the first three doses of the vaccine,"

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