Communicable · Medium priority
Typhoid fever
Core disease facts with the linked government programme, prevention and treatment or cure reality.
TypeBacterial disease — caused by Salmonella Typhi.
Image-based identification
Government programmes, schemes and services
- Surveillance: Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme–IHIP: Tracks enteric-fever cases and clusters and supports investigation of contaminated food or water sources.
- Linked initiative: Jal Jeevan Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission and food-safety work: Reduce typhoid transmission by improving safe water, sanitation, hygiene and food handling; India’s routine UIP does not currently include typhoid conjugate vaccine.
Prevention
- Prevent: Safe water, sanitation, hand hygiene, food safety, carrier control, typhoid vaccination where recommended
Treatment and cure reality
- Treat: Curable with susceptibility-guided antibiotics; resistance makes old fixed “drug of choice” answers unsafe.
Must remember
- Reservoir: Humans are the reservoir for typhoid fever.
- Spread: Faeco-oral through contaminated food or water.
- Clues: Prolonged fever, headache, malaise, abdominal symptoms, and sometimes rose spots.
- Diagnosis: Blood culture is most useful early; Widal test alone is not a reliable confirmation.
- Prevention: Safe water, sanitation, hand hygiene, food safety, carrier control, and typhoid conjugate vaccine where recommended.
- Antimicrobial-resistance trap: Do not memorize an old universal “drug of choice”; therapy follows local resistance and culture guidance.