An outbreak of whooping cough has been deemed unlikely due to the high vaccination rate, according to the Ministry of Health’s response to recent recorded cases in Hanoi recently. The Hanoi-based National Hospital of Paediatrics has admitted nine children suffering from whooping cough, five of which are from the capital city and others from nearby provinces. One case was admitted to the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases but has already been discharged, said Nguyen Tran Hien, Director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology. The whooping cough cases are scattered, he said, adding that health records of those infected showed that they did not receive a whooping cough vaccination. Director of the ministry’s Preventive Medicine Department Tran Dac Phu attributed the situation to the suspended use of the “5 in 1” Quinvaxem vaccine, which covers whooping cough, in the national universal immunization program and the recent scarcity of subsidized vaccines. Children who are not vaccinated are much more likely to become infected, Phu said, advising parents to give their children a full pertussis vaccination. In 2014, Vietnam recorded 107 cases of whooping cough, primarily in the northern areas of Hanoi, Haiphong city, and Bac Ninh, Nam Dinh, and Thai Binh province. (Vietnam News Jan 29)
