Benton County hit hard, nurses investigating who is infected

By The Associated Press

PORTLAND — By the numbers, whooping cough looks like it is on the rise across Oregon.

More than 500 cases have been reported to state health officials through November of 2004, a huge jump from just 51 cases in 1999.

But researchers say that might be because of doctors' heightened awareness of the illness, as well as improvements in the laboratory tests used to identify it.

In some counties, efforts to investigate whooping cough have put yet another burden on resources that are already stretched thin.

State and county health workers are scheduled to meet Monday in Corvallis to talk about how much effort and expense should go into tracking whooping cough.

A number of counties, especially Lane, Douglas and Benton, have been hit especially hard. The Alsea School District near Corvallis shut down this week because of an outbreak of influenza and whooping cough cases.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, the manager of communicable diseases for the Oregon Department of Human Services, said the higher number of cases doesn't necessarily mean there is more of the illness around.

Instead, he said it may just be that local health departments have become more aggressive about tracking down cases and reporting them.

Charlie Fautin, deputy administrator for public health in Benton County, said his staff is overwhelmed with investigations that turned up more than 118 confirmed and 106 presumed cases in 2004 — the highest of any country in Oregon that year.

In Benton County, public health nurses investigate all reports of whooping cough to see if others may have been infected. But that makes it tough for nurses to also look into reports of other problems, like salmonella, TB and gonorrhea, Fautin said.

"Our dilemma is funding," he said. "We want some guidance in a time of budget reductions about what's the most pressing public health threats."

Whooping cough is most dangerous to infants whose tiny breathing passages make them especially vulnerable to the respiratory infection. In the 1920s and 1930s, before childhood vaccinations were available, whooping cough caused as many as 250,000 illnesses a year, and 9,000 deaths — virtually all of them infants.