Knowledge Exchange Newsletter, October 2016

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Stories of Typhoid: Meet Samir

Meet Samir. The six-year-old son of a carpenter in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Samir is usually a “happy, school-going child.” But earlier this year, his mother and father, Hasina Akhter and Mohammad Rafiq, faced a crisis that was painfully familiar to many parents: their child was ill. Samir’s fever peaked at 103° Fahrenheit and he experienced severe pains all over his body.

For Hasina and Mohammad, and millions of parents across the developing world, taking care of a sick child threatens their monthly income. Yet when a week or two had passed, it became clear that Samir was not going to get better. Samir had typhoid. Read more about his story.

Save the Date

There are nine days left to submit your abstract for the 10th International Conference on Typhoid and Other Invasive Salmonelloses. Get your abstract in quickly before the deadline on October 28th! Know a researcher who might be interested? Spread the word to your network with our Social Media Toolkit.

Join us at the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting: 

  • November 14 from 4:00 PM – 5:45 PM: Bridging the Gap Towards Defining the Burden of Typhoid in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Symposium #45.
  • November 15 from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Typhoid, Paratyphoid and Invasive Non-Typhoidal Salmonella: A Time for Action. Side event in room 205 at the Hilton Atlanta. Contact us for more information.

Typhoid News

There’s a new page on the Coalition against Typhoid website where you can keep track of typhoid news from throughout the year. An easy-to-use menu lets you quickly find news stories from any month in 2016. Take a look!

Outbreak Watch

  • Ghana – Three people are dead in Takoradi, Ghana, during an outbreak that left 43 others ill.
  • India – Cases of seasonal fevers including typhoid has increased by 30-40 percent in the last three or four weeks in Visakhapatnam. At a government-run ashram in the village of Mall, India, 25 students were sickened with typhoid after food poisoning. There are calls for a declaration of health emergency in Khammam, with outbreaks of dengue and typhoid creating a shortage of beds and doctors.
  • Malawi – The Ministry of Health confirms a typhoid outbreak around Zalewa, linked to the outbreak in Malosa earlier this year.
  • Philippines – Cordillera is seeing a 56 percent increase in the number of typhoid cases this year compared to this point in 2015.
  • Taiwan – At least 140 cases of Salmonella linked to roast duck in Miaoli County.
  • Zimbabwe – In Redcliff, a high-density suburb in a midst of a severe water shortage, there were two cases and one death. In Centenary, two students at the local high school were diagnosed with typhoid.

Fighting Resistance

  • United Nations – World leaders meet to turn attention to the global problem of antimicrobial resistance.

The Dirt on Water

  • Fiji – The Ministry of Health is on high alert for typhoid cases as a long dry season continues.
  • Haiti – Aid agencies and the Ministry of Health are bracing for outbreaks of typhoid and other waterborne diseases.
  • Kenya – Locals fear an outbreak of waterbourne diseases like typhoid after an ongoing drought has forced them to use any available water source, whether dirty or clean.
  • Zambia – The deputy mayor of Lusaka is claiming that the city is facing a sanitation crisis of unsafe latrine use and a contamination-prone water
  • Zimbabwe – Activists are calling on the government to declare Zimbabwe’s water situation a national emergency, as people are being forced to drink from unprotected sources of water.

From the Blog

Publications

Featured

  • An extended genotyping framework for Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, the cause of human typhoid – Nature Communications

Antimicrobial Resistance

Case Report

Epidemiology

  • A retrospective epidemiological study on the incidence of salmonellosis in the State of Qatar during 2004-2012 – Qatar Medical Journal
  • Report of data on children with non-typhi Salmonella gastroenteritis in a three-year period – La Infezioni in Medicina

Genomics and Host Susceptibility

  • Rab32 restriction of intracellular bacterial pathogens – Small GTPases

Vaccines

  • Development of an Acid-Resistant Salmonella Typhi Ty21a Attenuated Vector For Improved Oral Vaccine Delivery – PLoS One
  • Cross-reactive multifunctional CD4+ T cell responses against Salmonella enterica serovars Typhi, Paratyphi A and Paratyphi B in humans following immunization with live oral typhoid vaccine Ty21a – Clinical Immunology
  • Evaluation of medicine retail outlets for sale of typhoid fever vaccine among adults in two urban and rural settings in western Kenya: a proof-of-concept study – BMC Health Services Research

To contribute to the Coalition Against Typhoid Knowledge Exchange Newsletter, contact us at cat@sabin.org. Like us on Facebook and Twitter for frequent updates.