'Outbreak in the Village. A Family Doctor's Lifetime Study of Whooping cough.'
There is absolutely no doubt that the world’s problems with Covid-19 have stimulated enormous interest in epidemiology and microbes. People are starting to realise that events like the current one have always happened and are largely only controlled by immunisation. Governments have immunisation programs for the benefit of citizens that are taken for granted. It is time to start understanding more about these vital activities.
I have written a book (published in September 2020) for general readers about my investigation of whooping cough while working as a family doctor and raising a family in the village of Keyworth in central England. The story spans over 40 years and describes all the events chronologically.
When you have read it you will know all about the disease very quickly, and discover that there are many thousands who have shared the difficult and frustrating experience of whooping cough. It clearly and vividly illustrates the vital role of immunisation in the prevention of this disease.
It is available as an eBook or in hardcover.
It can be ordered from any bookseller and I have put links here to Springer shop UK
It can be ordered through any Amazon outlet in hardback or Kindle version. Amazon UK, Amazon USA.
In the book I describe how I came to set up the website www.whoopingcough.net in 2000 to help people get diagnosed because doctors had lost the skill of recognising the disease and believed it only occurred in children who had not been immunised.
The story chronicles a time when whooping cough came back after an anti-vaccine scare, then settled down. The developed world thought it had disappeared but it had not gone at all, as I proved. I had to set up a website to help people get diagnosed because their own doctor never did! When tests came along to confirm it more easily, these cases that had been there all along were ‘found’, causing a lot of confusion. People think it has come back, but is hasn’t really, it never went away!
