Pakistan deploys new vaccine against 'superbug' typhoid outbreak

Pakistanbegan vaccinating millions of childrenagainsttyphoidon Friday to try to control a drug-resistant superbugoutbreakof the fever that has already infected some 11,000 people since 2016 and risks spreading internationally.

The immunisation campaign, using anewly-developed shot designed to preventtyphoidfever infection for up to five years, starts in the southern Sindh province and is targeted at children between 9 months and 15 years old, officials said.

By 2021, it will become a nationwide programme and part of routine childhood vaccination schedules.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

"Beginning the vaccination in urban areas is critical in preventing the disease among the communities most at risk," Azra Fazal Pechuho, Sindh's provincial minister for health, said in a statement.Typhoidalso disproportionately affects children.

Typhoidis caused by Salmonella Typhi bacteria and spreads through contaminated food and water. It causes fever, nausea, stomach pain and pink spots on the chest, and in severe cases can lead to complications in the gut and head that can be fatal.

A Global Burden of Disease Study by the USInstitute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that in 2017 there were 11 milliontyphoidcases and 116,000typhoiddeaths worldwide.

ThetyphoidoutbreakinPakistanis caused by a bacterial strain that has evolved extensive drug resistance and becomes a so-called "superbug". It started in 2016 and has so far infected around 11,000 people, with a death rate of around 1 per cent.

The strain is resistant to all but one antibiotic used to treattyphoid. If it develops resistance to this final antibiotic treatment, disease experts say, death rates among those infected could rise dramatically to as much as 20 per cent.

Thenewtyphoidvaccinewas approved in 2018 by the World Health Organization. Its roll-out is funded by the Geneva-based GAVIvaccinealliance, a body backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF and others, which arranges bulk buys to lowervaccinecosts for poor countries.

"This was a terrifying disease in the past," GAVI's chief executive, Seth Berkley, said in a telephone interview. "(And) the rise of extreme drug-resistanttyphoidrisks bringing us back to levels of mortality not seen since the 19th century - posing a risk to all of us."

Cases of have already been spread in travellers toPakistanfrom the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark and Taiwan, who have brought the disease to their home countries.