GP practices have been asked to lead on a national pertussis vaccination catch up campaign as part of this year’s contract.
The focus will be on promoting vaccination for pregnant women who are eligible for immunisation between 20 and 32 weeks of pregnancy.
In a letter to GPs, NHS England said the campaign, which will run from 1 October 2024 to Monday 31 March 2025, is in response to increasing rates of pertussis plus infant deaths.
Last month, it was reported that 10 babies had now died in the recent outbreak which started in November 2023.
By the end of July this year there have been 12,200 laboratory confirmed cases of pertussis in 2024, amidst declining vaccine uptake.
UK public health officials have repeatedly urged pregnant women to take up the offer of vaccination after figures from March showed uptake of 58.9% compared with a peak of 72.6% in March 2017.
Under the national campaign, which is a requirement of the 2024/25 GP contract, practices are expected to carry out a marketing campaign, ‘with a focus on preventing illness, sharing information with pregnant women around the benefits of getting vaccinated, using all relevant opportunities to signpost to pertussis vaccination, and offering pertussis vaccination opportunistically to pregnant women registered with the practice’.
Practice immunisation leads must take responsibility for improving awareness among staff of the importance of vaccination, the letter says.
And there must be a minimum of three opportunistic offers of immunisation where the practice is aware that a woman is pregnant including one face to face or phone conversation.
Practices should also check for any other missing vaccinations in this group, NHS England said.
Figures from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) show monthly case numbers have been falling since May but remain high and ‘may increase after children return to school in September’.
Evidence from England shows that vaccination at the right time in pregnancy is highly effective, giving 92% protection against infant death, UKHSA has said.
The recent increase in pertussis cases have been observed across all age groups and in every region in England.
In infants under three months, who are at highest risk of severe disease and too young to be fully vaccinated, cases peaked at 407 cases in 2012 before maternal pertussis vaccination was introduced.
There have been 379 infants aged under three months with confirmed pertussis between January and July 2024 compared with 237 cases in the same period in 2012.
Bizarre that this is not done routinely in the antenatal clinics (and all the antenatal vaccines administered there too)
If it were, the NHS and GP practice teams would probably not need to spend additional resource on promoting and delivering a less efficient and less productive parallel service for this