Gordon Dougan (extreme right) at the meet.
The S. typhi haplophytes were mapped on Google Earth showing the exact spots of outbreak and potential outbreaks in Kathmandu. With the mapping, the researchers can classify the bacteria to determine the strain causing the outbreak of typhoid fever and identify the individual organisms spreading the disease in the population.
Gordon Dougan of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute told a session of the World Conference of Science Journalists currently on in London that by re-sequencing the organism in Kolkata, they have been able to create a database of the potential outbreak spots. The project is being executed in collaboration with the International Vaccine Institute and National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), Kolkata.
"We have been able to influence the Nepalese government to create a disease burden database and are trying to tell them that they need to do something about it urgently," Gordon told Nature India.
The project, he said, had generated interest in the public health system of Nepal. "We will be doing pilot studies on a mass vaccination programme in the next two years in Nepal," he said.
About India though, Gordon was skeptical. "We will produce the Google Earth map within three to four months but I am not sure how a vaccination programme can be centred around it owing to the population problem in the country," he said.
The researchers at Sanger Institute had earlier found that the microorganism had evolved little since its emergence around 15,000 years ago. After sequencing 19 isolates of Salmonella typhi from 10 countries, they said the genome's stability was consistent with its niche as a bacterium infecting only humans, with asymptomatic carriers the main source of infection. These characteristics rendered it susceptible to potential eradication through vaccination.
Dougan said the new technique meant that individual viruses or bacteria or whole populations could be studied real-time in the field, because the evolutionary fingerprints in the DNA of the bacteria were now visible.
Professor of diagnostics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Rosanna Peeling, speaking at another session on elimination of killer diseases, said the diagnostics landscape in developing countries was affected largely by lack of investment, access, regulatory control and quality standards for test evaluations.
"I am, however, hopeful of an eradication programme for leishmaniasis in India since the Indian government has pledged its support to such a project in 2005," she told Nature India.
Peeling said she was concerned over a host of counterfeit diagnostic kits by private drug makers that have sprouted in the Indian market following this pledge. "There is no regulation in India to stop these poor quality kits – some of them are just strips of paper – from flooding the market. There's an urgent need to put laws in place to stop this," she said.
