Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine drive begins in Sindh

KARACHI: A two-week Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine drive against Extensively Drug-Resistant begins across Sindh on Monday.

According to Radio Pakistan, over 10 million children, aged between nine months to fifteen years, will be vaccinated during the drive.

The immunization campaign, using a newly-developed shot designed to prevent typhoid fever infection for up to five years, starts in the Sindh province and is targeted at children between 9 months and 15 years old, officials said.

By 2021, it will become a nationwide program and part of routine child vaccination schedules.

“Beginning the vaccination in urban areas is critical in preventing the disease among the communities most at risk,” Azra Fazal Pechuho, Sindh’s provincial minister for health, said in a statement. Typhoid also disproportionately affects children.

Typhoid is caused by Salmonella Typhi bacteria and spreads through contaminated food and water. It causes fever, nausea, stomach pain and pink spots on the chest, and in severe cases can lead to complications in the gut and head that can be fatal.

A Global Burden of Disease study by the U.S. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that in 2017 there were 11 million typhoid cases and 116,000 typhoid deaths worldwide.

The typhoid outbreak in Pakistan is caused by a bacterial strain that has evolved extensive drug resistance and become a so-called “superbug”. It started in 2016 and has so far infected around 11,000 people, with a death rate of around 1%.