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Lane County Offers Free Tdap Vaccines Friday

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Lane County Public Health will offer free vaccinations against Whooping cough Friday for adults. The agency has 500 vaccines available to administer at Charnelton Clinic in Eugene.

T-dap shots vaccinate against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, or whooping cough.  Lane County Public Health Doctor Patrick Luedke says adults need to get a booster shot even if they were vaccinated as children. He says in the last 20 years or so, more people have opted out of getting the vaccine.

Luedke: "Once the conditions, the virus, or the bacteria, in the case of whooping cough, reestablished itself, and there wee people who weren’t immune, we started seeing outbreaks and in the last 10 years, we've seen a whole lot of outbreaks."

Luedke says people with pertussis have been known to cough so hard they break a rib. The cough persists in adults.

Luedke: "And it lasts for several months and it's really no fun. But for babies, babies get these episodes where they can't get any air in and they turn blue and they die.

The free clinic for adults is Friday from 9 to 4 at Lane County Public Health on 7th and Charnelton in Eugene.
 

Rachael McDonald is KLCC’s host for All Things Considered on weekday afternoons. She also is the editor of the KLCC Extra, the daily digital newspaper. Rachael has a BA in English from the University of Oregon. She started out in public radio as a newsroom volunteer at KLCC in 2000.
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