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 The immunization campaign, using a newly-developed shot designed to
prevent typhoid fever 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 program and part of routine
child vaccination schedules.
"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. Typhoid
also disproportionately affects children.
Typhoid is 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 U.S. Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation estimates that in 2017 there were 11 million
typhoid cases and 116,000 typhoid deaths worldwide.
The typhoid outbreak in Pakistan is caused by a bacterial strain
that has evolved extensive drug resistance and become a so-called "superbug".
It started in 2016 and has so far infected around 11,000 people,
with a death rate of around 1%.
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The strain is resistant to all but one antibiotic used to treat
typhoid. 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%.
The new typhoid vaccine was approved in 2018 by the World Health
Organization. Its roll-out is funded by the Geneva-based GAVI
vaccine alliance, a body backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, the WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF and others, which
arranges bulk buys to lower vaccine costs 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 resistant typhoid risks 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 travelers to Pakistan from the
United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark and Taiwan, who
have brought the disease to their home countries.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Peter Graff)
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