109 Whooping Cough Cases Strike Brooklyn Ultra-Orthodox Neighborhood
An outbreak of whooping cough has hit New York City’s haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.
Some 109 cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, have been reported in the New York neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Williamsburg, and Borough Park over the past year, with the number of cases increasing in the last four months, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported.
A handout issued last week in English and Yiddish calls on pregnant women to get vaccinated for the disease.
On average, 200 cases of pertussis are reported across the entire city in a calendar year.
Ninety percent of the reported cases are children and toddlers, and around half of those children were either unvaccinated or had not received up-to-date shots, according to an alert sent around New York City’s Health network.
Three of the 37 mothers with children affected with whooping cough had received the recommended tetanus-diptheria-acellularr pertussis vaccination during pregnancy, the alert reported.
Five of the affected infants had to be admitted to hospital with one coming down with pneumonia.
City health officials are advising doctors to recall patients who have not received the recommended vaccinations, so they can receive proper and prompt treatment should they come down with the illness, the New York Post reported.
New York City last saw an uptick in whooping cough cases in 2011.
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