Tackle Nepal’s typhoid problem now
The news that a promising vaccine has been tested against Ebola is very welcome. But, as we in Nepal know only too well, the development of a vaccine is no guarantee that it will be used. Back in 1987, a successful trial of a typhoid vaccine here in Kathmandu gave the world a new and highly effective way to protect against one of its oldest killers. Yet, ironically, while the tourists and trekkers who have flocked in recent decades to Nepal — one of the countries where typhoid is still endemic — use the vaccine to protect themselves, most local people are denied it.