‘Drug-resistant typhoid is the final warning sign’: disease spreads in Pakistan as antibiotics fail

From his sickbed, eight-year-old Ukasha could see his siblings play with a ball in the courtyard. His head hurt and his body felt too heavy to move. Ukasha had typhoid fever – an illness he should have recovered from in days. It had been a month.

At its worst, typhoid can kill. Ukasha’s family were anxious, even moving his bed outside to give him fresh air and sunlight.

Children across the village – on the outskirts of Peshawar, northern Pakistan – had been falling ill.

Typhoid, also known as enteric fever, is an infection caused by contaminated food or water. If left untreated, it kills one in five. But the cure is a simple course of antibiotics. Most people, if they get the drugs promptly, should start recovering within a few days.

But the antibiotics used to cure typhoid are now failing. The bacteria, Salmonella typhi, have developed resistance to the antibiotics meant to kill them. It’s a pattern repeated across the world; the problem of resistant infections is global and borderless.

“Typhoid was once treatable with a set of pills and now ends up with patients in hospital,” says Jehan Zeb Khan, a clinical pharmacist at Hayatabad Medical Complex, a hospital in Peshawar.

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Source: The Guardian, 24 September 2024