A FOUR-WEEK-OLD girl in northern NSW has died in intensive care after contracting whooping cough, sparking official alarm over a worsening epidemic of the disease.

Free booster shots are being offered to new parents, grandparents and carers of young children in the state in a bid to protect babies too young to have had immunisations of their own.

Health officials are also calling on doctors to bring forward new babies’ first whooping cough jabs. The immunisations are usually given in three doses, at two, four and six months, but NSW Health is asking GPs and parents to consider bringing the first shot forward to six weeks as a result of the latest death.

NSW Health officials said in a statement last night that the baby girl was admitted to an unnamed hospital on the state’s north coast last week, but died on Monday.

It is believed to be the first case of a baby dying from whooping cough in NSW since at least 2000, and nationally since 2004.

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Babies of four weeks are too young to be immunised for whooping cough, however they are more likely to catch it if other people around them are not. This is a very sad example of the damage done by the likes of The Australian Vaccination Network. I blogged about this recently and reported on it for The Skeptic Zone podcast number 19.

More on this story as news comes to hand.

What a tragedy.

Wake up Meryl Dorey.