Opinion: A new vaccine against typhoid fever will also help fight antimicrobial resistance

Once upon a time, the best way to prevent and eliminate a food- and water-borne disease like typhoid fever was by improving sanitation and hygiene. Today, however, despite decades of progress with dramatic reductions in industrialized countries, mortality rates of typhoid have stagnated, even in countries with almost universal access to clean water. And now, a century after Irish cook Mary Mallon was condemned to spend the remaining 23 years of her life locked up in quarantine for unwittingly triggering a major outbreak in New York City — an act that earned her the nickname” — we could once again start to see a resurgence of this disease. Blame it on growing resistance of the bacteria that cause the disease, Salmonella typhi, to antibiotics. It’s part of the growing problem known as .