My husband and I are 83 and 84-1/2 respectively. My husband was born and grew up in a small town in northern New York state (Canadian border). I was born and lived in Oak Park, Illinois, until age 8-1/2 when my family moved to Scotland. We don t know whether or not we were inoculated for whooping cough. Should we be getting the shots for the disease now? We are both in fairly good health and have no chronic respiratory problems. Thank you, Martha Crouch
Hello, Welcome to Chat Doctor, Whooping cough is a bacterial infection that's highly contagious, and its also vaccine preventable. It starts like a cold, with congestion and upper respiratory symptoms, and then progresses to a cough. It spreads through close contact with oral secretions and respiratory Chat Doctor.  So it's easily spread through the cough, especially when people are in close contact like living in the same house with a person who has whooping cough. It can be treated with antibiotics usually erythromycin for 2 weeks.  It's important to take the doses on time to develop and maintain the appropriate antibiotic levels in the blood to clear the infection. Thank you.