K-P offers recommendations on drug-resistant typhoid

It urged doctors to collect blood and stool samples for review by test labs

PESHAWAR: After reports emerged of a drug-resistant typhoid fever from across the country with a few cases of the virus being transported to the United States and the United Kingdom, the provincial health department has issued health advisory about the fever.

The fever is caused by a strain of bacteria which is resistant to drugs and was first identified in 2016 in Sindh.

The fever has since spread and an alarming increase in cases was reported in Karachi where over 1,400 extensive drug-resistant typhoid cases have been confirmed since January 2018. With cases confirmed from outside Pakistan with the suggestion that it had been exported, it later became an international issue.



In this regard, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Health Department in a letter addressed to all medical directors of the medical teaching institutions and medical superintendent besides heads of all district headquarter hospitals across the province has shared the symptoms of the fever.

The department shared that drug-resistant cases should be identified on the basis of typhoid’s resistance to first-line recommended drugs for treatment such as ampicillin, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.

It also provided recommendations for extensive drug-resistant typhoid which resisted the first-line drugs including Fluoroquinolones and third generation cephalosporin besides Cephalosporins (ceftriaxone).

After detecting the cases, blood and stool samples should be collected and sent to the laboratory for confirmation as well as for antimicrobial susceptibility testing on isolates.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2018.