The Risks Of Having Typhoid Fever

Have you seen someone who has died of Typhoid fever? Well I have and do you know that Typhoid fever is one of the very deadly infectious diseases that is known in our environment and community as a whole. This is a disease of poverty but also of ignorance because the worse enemy is ignorance.

The causes of this typhoid fever is associated with the consumption of food and water contaminated by infected faces,Such contaminated material is then eaten or drunk and swallowed. Healthy people stomach do kill off the bacteria that causes these disease because their stomach is acidic while in others who are not very fit that is who are averagely healthy,the bacteria are able to side-track or overwhelm this line of initial defense and go on to over run the gall-bladder and the vessels conducting lymph through the abdomen. Using those organs as a launch-pad, it over runs the remaining parts of the body, thus producing these disease pattern that everyone talks about, but which so many know so few about. In our jargon, it is often said that anyone who has developed typhoid fever must have ‘eaten shit.

Salmonella(is a genetic name of Typhoid Fever) typhi(is the specie name of Typhoid fever that happens mostly in our environment and community) is a bacteria disease which belong to one of micro-organism that is organism which cannot be seen with an ordinary eyes except with the use of microscope is the main organism that causes Typhoid Fever. There are other similar bacteria called Salmonella paratyphi which nevertheless cause severe disease. These bacteria are found in contaminated water and food as mentioned above. They are also found in poultry products, particularly eggs which even poor people in our environment and community increasingly consume.

This Typhoid disease has a wide variety of symptoms which may present early in the disease or late. Some of these features are headaches, joint and muscle pains, constipation followed in a few days by diarrhoea. There may also be the appearance of red spots on the trunk called rose spots because of their characteristic redness. Fever, abdominal pain and vomiting are also forms of Typhoid Fever.

The formation of these forms often force even the most unwillingness go to the hospital where confirmatory tests are done to determine the presence of this disease.Headaches are throbbing and severe with occasionally blurred vision,Stooling and vomiting may be so severe that people collapse. The commonest test performed in many parts of the country is the Widal stimulus.It is more useful, more reliable to have urine and stool cultures done in the second and third weeks respectively which if positive will conclusively diagnose the disease. Routine blood tests will typically show a reduced blood count and surprisingly, a reduction in the white blood cell count as opposed to an increase that holds true for nearly all severe infections. The heart rate often fails also to rise in a measure commensurate with the severity of the disease. When all these features are put together, a diagnosis is made with a fair amount of certainty.

Typhoid Fever itself can be quite debilitating. It can remain alive in the blood for several weeks and would require possessing treatment to get it over with. It can cause a reasonably large reduction in the blood volume. It can move upward into the brain and cause what is known as typhoid psychosis during which phase the patients become violent and talkative and sleepless with an opposition for food. It can spread into the bones and cause chronic infections particularly in people with sickle cell disorder. It can similarly moved into the gall-bladder causing severe infection there, and this may threaten a life. It can cause the intestines to perforate, thus spilling their load of stool into the abdomen. Infected people would be dead in a short time while without emergency surgery. The abdomen of the infected people gets quite big and also tense so much in which they be unable to breathe well. It can similarly cause fluids to accumulate within the lungs and even inside the sac surrounding the heart and thus compressing it.
                                                    

All these Typhoid difficulty that has to be resolved bring us to the current issue regarding why this disease is poised to become an even bigger pridicamemt. Many people in the length and breadth of Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa do not have means to safe drinking water. Many people also do not properly store their food. To make matters worse, many people who are on treatment for typhoid do not truly have the disease. In the meantime, however, they would have been placed on potent antibiotics such as Ciprofloxacin; Amoxycillin-Clavulanic acid combinations; Perfloxacin; Azithromycin and Cotrimoxazole by all players in the health care system from the dispensing chemist through the auxiliary nurse to the bored doctor who wishes to be rid of the troublesome patient by giving him or hera prescription so he or she  can be left alone.The abuse and misuse of antibiotics are sure to impact negatively in our environment and communities. The result has been a steady rise of multi-drug resistantS strains of the salmonella organism. For now, there are an estimated 21.5 million typhoid infections annually in Africa and Asia with about 200,000 deaths. Most of these victims are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of them are children who tend to fare the most badly in the various communities.The arrival of the antibiotics drug resistant strain of this deadly infection is sure to spike this mortality rate. To make matters worse, the typhoid vaccine is not widely available. Where it can be found, its effectiveness is spotty and unreliable beyond two or three years.

In general,efforts must therefore be doubled to provide safe drinking water, safe food and whatever we consume be it raw or cooked to the largest number of people possible with the commitment and political. The diagnosis of typhoid fever ought to be taken more seriously than what we now experience and the indiscriminate use of antibiotics by all and sundry must be somehow curtailed by more firmly controlling the availability of the various compounds.In our individual dwelling places, we need to be aware of these problems, keep clean in our eating habits and cook our food properly before eating. Let us also resist the temptation of reaching for any of the antibiotics named above simply because we have the means to get them while acting essentially on a mere suspicion.