Curriculum · Public Health and Communicable Diseases
Enteric (typhoid) fever
What it is
Typhoid fever is caused by Salmonella typhi or S. paratyphi and spreads by the fecal-oral route. Among returning travelers with fever, enteric fever accounts for 1.5%-3% of cases, well behind malaria.
Causes and risk
Typhoid fever belongs with the causes of fever after travel whose incubation period is under 21 days, alongside malaria, dengue fever, rickettsiae and ehrlichiosis, viral hemorrhagic fevers, leptospirosis, acute HIV infection and babesiosis. The causes whose incubation period runs over 21 days are not a separate list: malaria heads that one too, and brucellosis stands in both — 2-4 weeks in the first and 2-4 weeks or more in the second. The rest of it is schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, visceral leishmaniasis, amebic liver abscess, hepatitis A, B and E, HIV, filariasis, rabies and African trypanosomiasis.