Editor's Note: This week's blog is a personal story from a Nigeria Health Watch team member, Patience Adejo. She writes about her experience being diagnosed with Typhoid Fever multiple times using the Widal test, only to recently learn that the test does not give the most accurate diagnosis for typhoid fever. She delves into the standard procedure for diagnosing typhoid fever in Nigeria and the need for renewed scrutiny and adherence to diagnosis guidelines.
Growing up in a family of five children, I was tagged with the nickname 'Healthy Patty' because I was so full of energy and hardly ever got sick. All that changed in May 2017 when I started to have constant headaches every day, coupled with a general feeling of malaise, dizziness and a high temperature. I visited the hospital many times and each time I was asked to do a Widal test, this always produced very high titre values. Widal Test is a simple laboratory test used to determine if a patient has typhoid. It works by forming tiny clumps which show the presence of the bacterial agent in the patient's blood. The amount of clumps formed is used to determine the severity of the infection.
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