Whooping cough cases highlight 'herd immunity'

Underscoring just how important it is for all children to get vaccinated against diseases, a new study concludes that children who don't get the jab for whooping cough are 23 times more likely to get the disease than children who do get vaccinated.

Jason Glanz's study in pediatrics found that one in 20 unvaccinated children get whooping cough compared to only one in 500 of the vaccinated kids. And the unvaccinated children accounted for 11 percent to 12 percent of all cases.

The vaccine for whooping cough is more than 90 percent effective. But that also underscores just how important it is to get all kids vaccinated, experts say, in order to prevent the rapid spread of the disease. The study examined the case histories of 751 children in Colorado.

- read the report from USA Today

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