Does India need a typhoid vaccine?

Last December, Khalid Shaikh missed 20 days of school and had to be hospitalised for nearly two weeks, as he battled a serious bout of typhoid that gave him fever, splitting headaches, stomach and body pain.

His family spent Rs 1 lakh on his treatment.

The 15-year-old and his friend had eaten food from a street vendor. Both ended up with typhoid, a water-borne disease caused by the bacteria Salmonella Typhi that attacks multiple organs, causes vomiting and, in rare cases, leads to death. The bacteria spreads through contaminated food and water, often in unsanitary environments.

India accounts for more than half of the global typhoid burden.

When Shaikh first developed a headache and stomach ache, a local doctor prescribed antibiotics. Then followed high fever that recurred every four hours. He was admitted to a hospital in Jogeshwari, a western suburb of Mumbai. When his fever did not subside, his parents shifted him to the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital.

“The doctors there suspected typhoid,” his mother Shabina Shaikh said. The teenager was given a strong dose of antibiotics because milder ones did not work on him. Twenty days after discharge, the typhoid relapsed. This time, he was in hospital for three more days.

Shaikh is a classic example of antimicrobial resistance, a condition...

Read more