Whooping cough is cause for alarm. On Tuesday, a two-month-old infant died in Queensland, Australia from the contagious infection where more than 41,000 cases have been reported.

An outbreak has been declared in New Zealand. There were 236 cases a week ago and numbers are likely higher now.

Here at home, the Ministry of Health confirmed an outbreak as clinical cases of whooping cough have increased to six and more to be confirmed. In Australia and New Zealand, the high numbers resulted from a drop in vaccination rates.

Samoa’s immunisation rate for the first dose is roughly 95 per cent, the coverage for the second dose above 85 per cent and the third dose below 80 per cent. A 90 per cent vaccination coverage rate is needed to attain herd immunity. This is the situation needed to control the spread of whooping cough.

Does whooping cough kill? It sure does. The death of the infant in Australia should be warning enough for parents who have yet to vaccinate their children and for adults who have never been vaccinated for whooping cough.

According to the New Zealand Ministry of Health, around 50 per cent of infants who catch whooping cough before the age of 12 months need hospitalisation and one or two in 100 of those hospitalised die from the infection.

This situation has remnants of the measles epidemic. Even before the world was thrown into the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had endured the measles epidemic. The reason for its spread was the low vaccination rate.

Some 5707 people contracted measles in the outbreak in 2019. In just three and a half months, 83 died and 1868 were admitted to hospital. That is also reason enough to be concerned about whooping cough.

Just like measles, whooping cough is a preventable disease and just like measles, children could end up bearing the brunt of it.

Be informed and read up on whooping cough. Learn how it is spread and what needs to be done if someone contracts it. There is a reason why it is called the ‘100-day cough’. It lasts for months and can cause breathlessness, especially in infants.

The vaccine is administered first to pregnant mothers and then to infants at six weeks, three and five months and finally at four years old. Adults can also get vaccinated.

A vigorous immunization campaign is needed through mobile clinics targeting all villages including Manono and Apolima. As much as people are shying away and avoiding protecting their children, let’s take the vaccines to them. This may require some extra money to be spent but what is the value of a child’s life?

Similarly, parents must value the lives of children and get them vaccinated and follow the immunization programme that has been successfully protecting children around the world to be safe from diseases which could end up killing them.

The National Health Task Force should already have a plan in place. We know that Australia and New Zealand have cases and we continue to get visitors from these nations. The MOH does not need to be told what to do because of the lessons from measles and COVID-19. By now, we should be ready to tackle the situation.

Let us hope, we do enough to steer away from a lockdown. Everyone has seen what the lockdowns did to the country.

Take the advisory from the Ministry of Health seriously. This situation can only be handled by working together.