Despite all the treatments available today, typhoid fever, which is especially effective in underdeveloped countries, causes the death of an average of 200,000 people every year. A study has been published that worries about the disease caused by the bacterium called ‘Typhi’, a subspecies of Salmonella bacterium, which has been present for hundreds of years.
The new research, published in The Lancet, the leading journal of the medical world, showed that the bacteria that causes typhoid have begun to increase their resistance to drugs rapidly. Researchers examining Typhi bacteria from Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India in the middle of 2014 and 2019 found that the bacteria increased its resistance to antibiotics.
It rapidly increases the resistance of bacteria that cause typhoid:
Today, only one of the antibiotics used for the prevention of typhoid continues to play an active role. But new research has shown that Typhi bacteria increase resistance to this antibiotic, azithromycin. So much so that a bacterial sample that was discovered to be drug-resistant in an investigation in Pakistan became the dominant genotype in the population from 2016 to 2019.
According to scientists, the new research was alarming so that typhoid fever does not turn into a major epidemic in the future. The measure suggested by scientists in this regard is the use of ‘typhoid conjugate’ vaccines in typhoid endemic countries. Today, Pakistan is in the leading position in this regard. The country was the first in the world to routinely vaccinate against typhoid fever.