Parents' preventive pertussis vaccination before birth is not always well understood.

Tuesday, in "Without appointment" on Europe 1, the doctor Jimmy Mohamed justified this practice by recalling that the contaminations of the children by the parents are very frequent and can generate a serious danger for the baby.

DECRYPTION

At the microphone of

 Sans rendez-vous

 Tuesday on Europe 1, Fanny, a listener from Brest, says she does not understand why her doctor asks her to be vaccinated against whooping cough, when she plans to have a child with her boyfriend.

For her, this is not very understandable, because the baby should then be quickly vaccinated.

 Doctor and columnist Jimmy Mohamed replied by stressing that parental contamination of children is frequent and can be serious.

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Why should expectant parents get the pertussis vaccine?

Whooping cough is a respiratory infection that will lead to bronchitis, bronchopneumonia, almost like Covid-19.

It is caused by a bacteria called "Bordetella pertussis", which is very contagious.

With the Covid, a sick person infects two or three.

For whooping cough, the R (reproduction rate), that is to say the number of people that we will infect when we are sick, is close to 18. Whooping cough is therefore an extremely contagious disease that part disappeared thanks to vaccination.

When we are sick, we cough, we sneeze, we emit small droplets of saliva that will infect children.

Transmission does not occur from child to child as can be the case in the vast majority of viral infections, especially for Covid: with whooping cough, it is the parents, poorly vaccinated, who will infect newborns .

It is estimated that this mode of transmission is responsible for 50% of contaminations.

One in two parents infects their child.

What are the risks for the newborn in the event of contamination?

First of all, in adults pertussis is not too much of a problem.

Whooping cough will usually cause a pesky and long cough.

The problem lies with newborns.

In them, whooping cough causes respiratory pauses, apneas.

When you are an adult and stop breathing, after a while the lowering of oxygen activates respiratory circuits in the brain to cause the body to catch its breath.

In the newborn, these mechanisms are not mature.

He will therefore take breathing pauses, his oxygen will drop, but he will not catch his breath if he has whooping cough.

Disturbances can then cause sudden deaths.

This is why doctors offer to vaccinate children.

Not to mention the complications, sometimes with encephalitis, convulsions, or very severe lung infections.

How is the vaccination for the newborn baby?

Previously, the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis was offered at one month.

But now, the first vaccination is offered from two months.

Between zero and two months, there is therefore a risk of catching whooping cough for the newborn.

In addition, you are not yet completely protected after the first dose.

We therefore vaccinate at two months, at four months, at eleven months, then we do booster shots every five years from the age of 6.

The vaccine is also quite effective.

The effectiveness is 85 to 100% and the duration of protection from five to ten years.

Reminders are therefore necessary.

For adults, the benchmarks are supposed to be quite simple: 25 years, 45 years, 65 years and then every ten years beyond, since the immunity is a little less powerful.

Also be careful: in case of birth, do not hesitate to also vaccinate the grandparents.