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Vighnaharta
Naturopathy Health Care Centre
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Dr. Manish Wagh, G - 3, Dwarkadhish, 77 Vaibhav nagar, Jamnagiri
road, Dhule. |
Whooping Cough
Whooping cough or pertussis, as it is called in medical parlance, is a contagious disease. Unlike some other diseases, a new born baby has no immunity to this disease, and can get it any time after birth. It commonly affects infants during the first year of their life, when it is very severe and most of the deaths due to it occur during this period. Many cases occur in children upto 5 years of age. In some cases children upto 12 years may also be affected. The disease may cause serious trouble in the lungs.
This highly infectious disease is caused by bacteria. It spreads rapidly from one child to another by droplet-infection. This is especially so during the early catarrhal stage,but once the typical spasmodic bout starts, the infectivity becomes negligible. This disease has a prolonged course of 8 to 10 weeks.
Symptoms
The disease has a catarrhal and a spasmodic stage. For the first week, the cough is like an ordinary upper respiratory catarrh. At the end of a week, it becomes spasmodic and comes in bouts, initially more often during the night, but later during the day as well. The child goes on coughing. His face becomes red and suffused, the tongue protrudes and the eyes begin to water. At the end of the bout, the child takes a deep breath, and there is a prolonged croaking sound which is called a whoop. This sound is produced by the air entering through a partially closed glottis ( entrance to the larynx). This gives the disease its name. The child brings out a sticky secretion from his nose and mouth and very often vomits. At the end of the bout, the child lies back exhausted. Gradually, over the next three or four weeks, the bouts of cough and their duration become less and disappear in about 8 to 10 weeks from the beginning of the disease.
In immunized children, the disease is mild and atypical.
Due to the severity of bouts of cough, bleeding can occur into the eyes, from the nose, the lung, and , in rare cases, into the brain, resulting in convulsions. In many young children, lung complications such as collapse of a part of the lung are common because of the thick sticky nature of the secretions blocking the passage of air to a part of the lung. Secondary infection may result in pneumonia. They may be convulsions, and, in rare cases, inflammation of the brain.
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© Dr. Manish Wagh, Vighnaharta Naturopathy Health Care Centre, Dhule. All rights reserved worldwide.