Death from infections among previously healthy infants is rare in our country. Occasionally, warning of a severe disease may in the initial phase of the disease become manifest only from the parents' description of the condition of their child. We describe two infants under the age of 3 months with paroxysmal cough, whose whooping cough progressed to require intensive care. A suspicion of whooping cough was not roused neither among those making the emergency care assessment nor by the attending physicians before the patients had to be placed on a ventilator as the illness progressed. One of our patients succumbed to the illness despite of intensive care. Whooping cough should be suspected in all unimmunized infants having paroxysmal cough.