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A curious case of hidden, dangerous typhoid: It's time to take action now

Typhoid bacterial strains in India are already resistant to the cheapest first and second line of antibiotics

Typhoid, Typhoid patient, hospital
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Of 14.3 million people affected worldwide, 72 per cent of the patients are in South Asia because of poor sanitation conditions

Ankur Paliwal New Delhi
In 2017, when clinician scientist Gagandeep Kang and her colleagues started an extensive typhoid surveillance study across India, the general perception among the scientific community was that typhoid was significantly declining based on the data reported by big hospitals in India. But when Kang’s team began to closely study people at the community level, it found about 20-fold increase in typhoid cases, mostly children, at most study centres in comparison to the numbers reported by the hospitals. 

Researchers find about 800 typhoid patients for every 100,000 people. These numbers are comparable with typhoid cases reported in 1990s from Delhi slums. Typhoid