Constance Ikokwu
12 September 2007
Washington D.C. — The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) has approved Typhoid Check, a new product meant for the diagnosis of the deadly typhoid fever.
Pioneered by a Nigerian Paediatrician and Internist at the Division for Allied Health, Howard University, Washington DC, Dr Lateef Olopoenia, Typhoid Check will make up for the shortcomings of the Widal Agglutination test that has been widely used in diagnosing typhoid fever in Nigeria.
Typhoid Check has also been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) United States of America (USA), an equivalent of NAFDAC.
According to Olopoenia, Typhoid Check clearly determines if a patient's fever is caused by malaria, typhoid fever or other infectious agents, as opposed to Widal which reacts to any kind if infection, resulting in wrong diagnosis and prescription in most cases.
"The use of Widal has brought about significant diagnosis of typhoid when people actually do not have typhoid fever. This new tool can tell whether that fever is due to typhoid or not. If you think you have fever and want to find out whether it is due to malaria, typhoid or something else, the data can be certain that at least your fever is not due to typhoid," he said.
A wrong diagnosis could be disastrous and even deadly, says Olopoenia. Giving an example, he told THISDAY in Washington DC, that when a drug like Chloramphenicol is used following wrong diagnosis, it could cause significant bone marrow suppression, leading to aplastic anemia and eventually death.
"If you are being treated for something you don't have, the medicine will literally kill you," he adds.
Typhoid Check was approved by then NAFDAC under the Ministry of Health 10 years ago. But most products required re-approval when the agency became independent of the Ministry, explaining why it was re-registered this year.
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