The Director of Public Health is encouraging pregnant women to take up the whooping cough jab after a “flurry of cases” locally resulted in one hospitalisation.
Earlier this year the UK saw a substantial rise in cases, with nine baby deaths in England.
Director of Public Health, Dr Helen Carter, said Gibraltar did see a few cases earlier this year and the GHA is under “enhanced surveillance” to monitor any new cases.
“We've got a pathway in place so that if our GPs or paediatricians suspect there might be a pertussis case,” she said, explaining that “pertussis is the bacteria and whooping cough is the disease.”
“We're on sort of enhanced surveillance because of those links to the UK and that travel and movement of people.”
Whooping cough is an infection of the lungs and breathing tubes, which results in symptoms such as coughing bouts and difficulty breathing.
It can be dangerous for babies under a year old who can have more severe symptoms such as dehydration and pneumonia.
Dr Carter said she expected to see cases in Gibraltar and the hospitalised case has fully recovered.
She added the GHA strongly encourages pregnant women to take up the jab and protect their babies from infection.
“We offer all our pregnant women a pertussis vaccine during their pregnancy and the reason that's really, really important is it protects the baby in the first few months of life, which is the really sad cases that you've seen in the UK, where they sadly had a small number of babies die,” she said.
Dr Carter described how the childhood immunisation programme begins within the first few months of life.
“But before two months, baby will only have the immunity coming from the mum,” she said.
“So that's why we offer the vaccine to the mum, so that they produce the antibodies and it passes through to the baby to cover them for that first two months in life.”
Dr Carter said there is currently no statistical data on the uptake of the vaccine.
“We've been doing a lot of work with maternity colleagues because at the moment that's been documented in mum's paper notes,” she said.
“What we've been doing is working on getting the midwifery colleagues access to the EMIS system.”
She added that when a case of whooping cough is found, even in adults, the GHA will assess whether there are any vulnerable contacts including any pregnant women
“When we have a case of whooping cough, we'll be in contact to look at and interview the case or the parents, because it can happen in adults as well, and then we'll look at,” she said.
She added the GHA may offer a course of antibiotics, to make sure that the patient doesn’t develop the cough if they're in a high-risk group.
“We're in that sort of enhanced surveillance, but fortunately, we haven't had anybody severely poorly like they've had in the UK,” she said.