‘First XDR typhoid case surfaced in Karachi’

Sewage contaminated water is the primary source of XDR typhoid, says LUMHS VC

HYDERABAD: Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) Vice Chancellor Dr Bikha Ram Devrajani has said that the first case of drug resistant typhoid surfaced in Karachi. At a press conference on Friday at Hyderabad Press Club, held at the conclusion of LUMHS' week-long awareness campaign about XDR typhoid, the VC said that the impression that Hyderabad reported the first case was wrong.

"A patient in Karachi was diagnosed with XDR typhoid after which Agha Khan University Hospital [AKUH] started research some three years ago". A large number of XDR typhoid cases were reported in Hyderabad in 2017 after which AKUH and district health department launched a campaign of immunisation.

According to health officials, around 170,000 children have been immunised so far in the district. Devrajani said that sewage contaminated drinking water was the primary source of the typhoid. He said that his varsity's department of community medicine and public health sciences along with the US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCAS-W) was conducting a research on the ways to improve the quality of piped water.



He advised the people to boil water and use adequate quantity of chlorine to purify it. "The unbalanced use of chlorine tablets [for water filtration] may cause other illnesses," he cautioned and asked people to dissolve one chlorine tablet in five litres of water.

The VC said that LUMHS lacked a research lab where it can prepare medicines for different illnesses.

He said that the varsity had submitted a proposal to Sindh government for the approval and financial assistance for setting up of an advanced research lab. Earlier, the VC and Hyderabad Additional Commissioner Tahir Memon led an awareness walk and distributed leaflets advising people to use boiled and chlorinated water, avoid getting treatment from quacks, to consume antibiotics as prescribed by a doctor among other precautionary methods.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2019.