Pregnant Women To Get Free Whooping Cough Vaccine

"I can’t tell you how relieved I am"

From July onwards, all pregnant women in Australia will have access to a free whooping cough vaccination.

The government has added the vaccine to the national immunisation at a cost of $40m.

It is the most effective way to protect a baby against the disease, as newborns can’t be vaccinated until they’re six weeks old.

“There are now no barriers and no excuses for not protecting yourself, your family and the rest of the community,” Health Minister Greg Hunt said, according to News.com.au.

Toni McCaffery, whose month-old daughter Dana died of whooping cough in 2009, has been lobbying for a national vaccination program ever since.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” she told The Sunday Telegraph.

“This just gives us a consistent approach so no other family has to go through what we did.”

“Information is everything, you cannot protect your child from something you don’t know about,” she continued, revealing she was never warned about whooping cough when pregnant.

“Every new family will get the warning we never got. This now means we have kept our promise to our daughter.”