Vaccination against whooping cough for pregnant women, with the aim of protecting infants against its serious forms, has been recommended since 2022. In 2024, in a context of resurgence of the disease, 65.5% of pregnant women respected the instructions .
Vaccination of pregnant women against whooping cough has been recommended since 2022 by the High Authority for Health (HAS), without being compulsory, in order to reduce the risk of serious forms in newborns and infants. Was this message followed, particularly in the context of a resurgence of the whooping cough epidemic in 2024? To find out, the Epi-Phare group (ANSM/health insurance) conducted a study using the national health data system (SNDS), analyzing the vaccination status of more than 300,000 women who became pregnant between August 1. 2023 and March 31, 2024 and having reached at least 34 weeks of pregnancy on October 1.
In the end, 65.5%, or two thirds of them, were vaccinated, including more than 90% between the 18the and the 34e week of pregnancy. After differentiating women whose pregnancy began between August and December 2023 from those who began in 2024, the vaccination rates were 63.8% and 72.4%, respectively. The two most used vaccines were Repevax (67.4%) and Boostrixtetra (32.2%).
“These results show that vaccination of women during pregnancy against whooping cough was widely followed during the 2023-2024 epidemic, despite its non-obligatory nature,” conclude the researchers. The latter recall that the vaccination rate has increased significantly since the HAS recommendation: it went from 2% of pregnant women vaccinated in 2021 to 12% in 2022, then to 41% in 2023, to reach 65.5% in 2024, in an epidemic context.
However, the study reveals strong disparities at the regional level. Indeed, the rates were significantly higher than the national average (between 70% and 81%), in regions located in the north and west of France such as Pays de la Loire, Brittany, Normandy, New Aquitaine and Hauts-de-France. On the other hand, low rates were noted in particular in the DROM (15.9% in Guadeloupe, 8.1% in Martinique and 5.1% in Guyana), as well as in Corsica (46.2%), in Provence -Alpes-Côte d’Azur (58.7% with 31.1% in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department), in Île-de-France (59.3% with very varied rates ranging from 46.6% for Val-d’Oise to 75.1% for Paris). “It is necessary to put in place measures to improve vaccination coverage in certain departments”estimate the authors.
