American scientists from the Yale School of Public Health in Connecticut revealed which countries are primarily threatened by the drug-resistant typhoid epidemic, also known as supertyphoid. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature Communications (NatComms).
Typhoid fever is caused by the Salmonella Typhi (S. Typhi) bacteria. According to the World Health Organization, 9 million people were infected with this disease in 2019. The disease claimed 110 thousand lives.
The highly drug-resistant (XDR) variant of S. Typhi emerged in Pakistan in 2016 and has since become the most common variant of the pathogen in the country. Because typhus spreads through water and food contaminated with feces containing S. Typhi, it is unlikely to cause epidemics in countries with high levels of sanitation and clean water.
To better understand where to focus efforts, researchers compared the number of air travel from Pakistan with three sets of estimates of annual typhoid cases in other countries to identify those most likely to have a major outbreak or sustained supertyphoid transmission.
The ten most vulnerable countries identified in the analysis include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Uganda and Kenya. The researchers noted that Afghanistan remains particularly vulnerable due to the large number of people arriving from Pakistan and the health and humanitarian crisis.
Previous scientists in the name Sources of typhoid infection in private homes.