Typhoid fever in children of low and high socieconomic strata: comparison of hygiene habits

Abstract

The relationship between the hygienic habits of children who had typhoid fever (TF) who had recently begun attending school and their family group, is assessed. It is supposed that children, independently of their SES, acquired TF because of inadequate habits which facilitated the oral-fecal cycle. The sample was formed of 40 child-mother dyads: 20 of low SES (group A) and 20 of high SES (group B), the child of each of which had had TF. Results showed that the hygienic habits of children with respect to the oral-fecal cycle, their perception of school toilet cleanliness as well as the mothers' explanation of their children's hygienic habits is very similar in the two groups. The importance of these results is that the SES is seem to be irrelevant in the case of TF but that the hygienic habits of the children are of importance. Public health policy should be modified to include the teaching of proper hygienic habits (oral-fecal cycle).

Sanitation and Education

“…Examples of such health problems include diarrhea(Burgers, 2000), blinding eye-trachoma(Emerson et al, 2004;Cumberland, Hailu and Todd, 2005), typhoid fever(Alvarez et al, 1990), and Hepatitis A(Rajaratnam et al, 1992).5 The DISE data reflect a multi-state data-collection process. First, school headmasters answer a nationally-standardized survey-questionnaire.…”

Determinants of Typhoid Fever Occurrence in Regions with High Risk of Contracting Communicable Diseases: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…In all studies, the prevalence of TF was associated with principal variables related to TF occurrence. In 10 (41.7%) studies, there was an association between TF and contact with someone who had TF and lived in the same household, community, or hospital [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. In 9 (37.5%) studies, the occurrence of TF was associated with inadequate hygiene practices [27,29,[32][33][34][36][37][38] whereas in 6 (25.0%) studies, there was an association with the consumption of contaminated food [27,30,31,33,37,39].…”

“…In 10 (41.7%) studies, there was an association between TF and contact with someone who had TF and lived in the same household, community, or hospital [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. In 9 (37.5%) studies, the occurrence of TF was associated with inadequate hygiene practices [27,29,[32][33][34][36][37][38] whereas in 6 (25.0%) studies, there was an association with the consumption of contaminated food [27,30,31,33,37,39]. In 5 (20.8%) studies, untreated water was associated with TF [26,27,31,34,39] and the patients were younger than 30 years [28,36,38,40,41].…”

“…Only few studies, TF occurrence was higher in people with a low socio-economic status [29][30][31], with an imbalance of biochemical parameters [43,44], in males [27,31,33,39,45], in people with clinic symptoms such as diarrhea or abdominal distention [28,38,46], in people that travelled [27], in summer [41], and in people younger than 30 years (Table 1) [28,38,41].…”

Colonización bacteriana anormal del intestino delgado alto en escolares de nivel socioeconómico alto y bajo

“…Esto concuerda con la demostraci6n, en preescolares de NSE-A, de tasas mayores de portaciOn asintomatica de algunas bacterias que en grupos comparables de nivel bajo 11 . Por otra parte, el riesgo de enfermar de fiebre tifoidea parece independiente del nivel socioeconOmico y se ha relacionado m£s hien con las pra"cticas higie'nicas en el hogar 27 . Lo antedicho sugiere que la contamination microbiologica del ambiente resulta de la interaction de multiples factores entre los cuales el NSE no es el ma's importante.…”