A 20-month old Australian born child recently returned to Australia after a three month trip to Pakistan. She was diagnosed with typhoid fever at the Children Hospital in Westmead, Sydney.
Dr Philip Britton, Senior Lecturer, Child and Adolescent Health, Children's Hospital at Westmead in Sydney told SBS Urdu that the child had a mild diarrheal illness while in Pakistan but on her return after a few weeks, became “quite unwell with fever, loss of appetite, abdominal pain and vomiting.”
“She was presented to the hospital where typhoid fever was confirmed. By the time we commenced treatment, the child was unwell enough to be in the hospital.
“Once it was confirmed that it [the bacteria] was drug-resistant, she was needed to be in the hospital because the only antibiotic available to treat this child was through an intravenous drip.
“The child responded to the therapy and was able to be discharged after a week without any complication but we are concerned that in all children with typhoid fever they can become really unwell and develop complications with the illness.”
According to Dr Britton, there has been an outbreak of the extensively drug-resistant typhoid in Pakistan and Western India over the last two years.
“Typhoid is a febrile illness in children and adults that occurs mainly in South Asia that includes Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka but also in South and East Asia.
“It is caused by bacteria called Salmonella Typhi, that only affects human beings and people get it through contaminated food and water.
It is commonly resistant to few classes of antibiotics but increasingly we are seeing forms of these bacteria being resistant to almost all the antibiotics that are available to us.
3D illustration of Salmonella Bacteria. Medicine concept. Source: GettyImages/urfinguss
“The vaccine [for these bacteria] is licensed and available and we would recommend it be taken by anyone travelling to South Asia whether that is tourists or family visits to friends and relatives.
In particular, we are focusing on such families because they tend to travel for longer periods of time and tend to stay with family and tend to eat and drink what the local people are eating and drinking, so they tend to be at a higher risk of acquiring the infection.
When you travel to these countries it is like going without any protection.
"Vaccination is a way to provide that additional immune protection for those people who are travelling to those environments who are not resident there."
According to the Australian Immunisation Handbook, is recommended for the people (two years and above) travelling to the “Indian subcontinent, most Southeast Asian countries and South Pacific nations, including Papua New Guinea.”
“This advice is also relevant for those travelling to endemic regions to visit friends and relatives. Inactivated parenteral and live oral typhoid vaccine formulations are available.”
Australians under the age of 54 are being encouraged to check their vaccination status. Source: Getty
Limited awareness of vaccine
Dr Philip Britton says that there is no direct survey to know the exact number of people getting vaccine for this type of illness but through various other surveys it can easily be inferred that people going to South Asian countries to meet their families and friends tend to think that such illness do not pose any risk to their health.
“The parents of the children who have lived and grown up in these [South Asian] countries, and have not had any major illnesses tend to think that there is no risk.
"However, what we know is that with the population levels there is a risk.
"Also, people who have lived in these areas over the medium to the long term often develop some level of immunity for these organisms, but when you live outside of those environments for a long period of time that immunity is either lost or if you are born outside of those environments you don’t have it at all."
The vaccine is the best way to prevent this infection.
The case was reported in a letter published online in the Medical Journal of Australia.
