The management of typhoid fever

The diagnosis of typhoid fever requires clinical alertness and ready laboratory support, blood cultures being most important. Chloramphenicol remains the standard drug specific for acute typhoid fever while cotrimoxazole is a useful alternative. Both of these are also useful in the treatment of relapses. The importance of supportive treatment cannot be over-emphasized. The treatment of intestinal complication is mainly conservative. Steroid is useful in the toxic delirious state. The management of chronic typhoid carriers is still an unsolved problem. To exclude the chronic carriers from handling food and to give advice on meticulous attention to personal hygiene is still the best way of public health control.