Earlier this month, the Coalition against Typhoid (CaT), along with partners at the Bangladesh Pediatric Association, the International Vaccine Institute andthe International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), convened the 8th International Conference on Typhoid Fever and Other Invasive Salmonelloses in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Researchers and health professionals, as well as local, national and international policy makers were in attendance. In total, more than 300 national and international participants attended the two day event. You can read more about the details of the conference in this press release.
The last international conference on typhoid fever was held in Kilifi, Kenya in 2009, and discussions there focused on increasing surveillance in Africa in order to better understand the total typhoid disease burden. This year the theme shifted gears. The immunization community expects that next generation typhoid vaccines – polysaccharide conjugate vaccines – will offer increased protection to adults, children and infants under the age of 2 . The hope is that several of these conjugate vaccines will be approved and available for public use in the coming months. Evidence based decision making will be important as policy makers transition from the currently available, WHO pre-qualified vaccine towards the introduction of a new typhoid vaccine into national immunization programs (or introduce a typhoid vaccine for the first time in some cases).
Sabin’s own Dr. Christopher Nelson, Director of the Coalition against Typhoid (CaT) Secretariat, discussed the importance of national typhoid vaccination policies as well as the incredible value of the next generation of conjugate vaccines in his plenary presentation. Other sessions throughout the conference allowed for in-depth discussions on diagnostics, disease monitoring and surveillance, reports from the field, and other topics related to typhoid, paratyphoid and non-typhoidal invasive salmonelloses.
For presentation, poster abstracts, and other information on the 8th International Conference on Typhoid Fever and Other Invasive Salmonelloses visit www.typhoidconference.org!
