Journal of Clinical and Cellular Immunology
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9899
ISSN: 2155-9899
Nwafia W C and Nwafia I N
Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Clin Cell Immunol
Introduction: Many methods for the diagnosis of typhoid fever have been established. Widal test is the most popular diagnostic laboratory test for typhoid fever in Nigeria. The abuse of widal test have been reported.That typhoid fever is endemic in Nigeria is true but the outbreak of an epidemic has uptill now not been documented. In eastern part of Nigeria where this survey was carried out and indeed in the whole Nigeria, the ailment typhoid fever has been grossly exaggerated and given epidemic undertone. This survey therefore sought to determine the validity of the claim and the possible reasons behind it. Methods: Questionnaire method was used for this study.A total of 45 hospital and 70 doctors working in them were surveyed. 30 diagnostic laboratories and 67 staff working in them were also surveyed. A total of 900 patients were used. Only the patients who complained of malaria or typhoid fever related symptoms and sent to lab analysis were used for the study. They were randomly selected. Result: 61% of the doctors were general practioner while 7.1% were pediatricians, physicians were 20% and surgeons 11%. There were more privately owned laboratories (56.6%) compared tohospital owned (43.4%). 40.3% were unqualified lab workers working in the lab while 25.4% were qualified ones.Adult males were highst, 57.1%, adult females 40% and children 2.9% majority of the request were made by the subjects themselves(45.3%) while those requested by doctors were 30.1% and those recommended by others including non-medically qualified persons and lab staff themselves were 24.6%. When the result of the widal tests were analysed,it showed that 83.9% were positive for salmonella typi while the rest negative (16.1%) and that 79.39% of the positive samples were obtained in the privately owned lab. And none were sent for confirmatory test. Discussion: The epidemic picture of typhoid fever in eastern Nigeria in general can be said to arise from the abuse of widal test,and actually there is no true epidemic of this in eastern Nigeria within the period studied.The medical practitioner should live up to their professional ethics and government should clamp down on all the mushroom labs. No grant were received in the development of this study.