An epidemiological surveillance of asymptomatic typhoid carriers associated in respect to socioeconomic status in India

The term ‘enteric fever’ was coined to embrace both typhoid
and paratyphoid. It was known as a generalized infection of
the reticuloendothelial system and intestinal lymphoid tissue
accompanied by sustained fever and bacteraemia. Typhoid
has remained a major public health issue in many tropical
countries and the highest burden of the disease is in Asia
(Pang et al. 1998). The global burden of typhoid was estimated
as 16,000,000 cases and 600,000 deaths per year
(Pang and Puthucheary 1983; Pang and Bhutta 1995).
Currently global pandemics are being caused by the less
common serovar of S. typhi (Miko et al. 2002).
The asymptomatic carrier state in humans has had serious
consequences on public health and the exclusive source for
typhoid bacillus was asymptomatic typhoid carriers. An
individual could asymptomatically carry the typhoid bacilli
for days to years without any symptoms of typhoid fever
(Bigelow and Anderson 1933: White and Parry 1996;
Senthilkumar and Prabakaran 2005). They usually excrete
as many as 1011 virulent typhoid bacilli per gram of faeces.
These organisms reside in the scarred foci of the biliary tract,
migrate through the bile ducts and over the vast surface area
of intestinal epithelium; however, they did not