18 children killed in ESP whooping cough outbreak

By GYNNIE KERO
EIGHTEEN children have died while a hundred others are being treated in an outbreak of whooping cough affecting 24 villages in East Sepik, according to an official
Director for Public Health Brown Kum said from Wewak yesterday a medical team had been sent to the villages in the Keram local-level government to treat and vaccinate children between the ages of one and 15. Keram is in Angoram district.
Kum said the team would remain in Keram for the next 21 days to treat the children and prevent the disease from spreading to other villages along the lower Sepik River.
He said the first case was reported at Bunam on June 1.
It later spread to the 24 villages in Keram.
Earlier this year, he said 14 children in the May River area of Ambunti district died from whooping cough. Whooping cough or pertussis is an extremely contagious disease and affects mostly children under the age of 10, according to medical experts.
Initial symptoms include blocked nose, dry and irritating cough, watery eyes and diarrhoea.
Infection occurs in the lining of the airways, principally in the windpipe as well as the airways that branch off from the trachea to the lungs. Infected people can transmit it to others six to 20 days after the bacterium entered their body, and three weeks after the start of the whooping cough.
The bacterium is transported in tiny droplets of water in the air.
When the patient coughs and sneezes, hundreds of droplets of moisture are expelled into the air.
If people nearby inhale some of this moisture, they are exposed and could become infected.