“In the U. S. Army in France in 1918, in several camps where sanitation and hygiene were grossly neglected, typhoid vaccination proved to be little or no protection, and it has been officially admitted to be a great failure, as typhoid epidemics prevailed extensively in said camps with a high death-rate among the well vaccinated men.”
—Chas M. Higgins, M.D.
Typhoid Fever is an illness caused by bacteria called Salmonellae enterica with an incubation period lasting about one to two weeks.628 The hallmark of typhoid fever is a persistent moderate fever.629 Other symptoms are generalized aches and pains, loss of appetite, headache and excessive sleepiness.630
There are currently two typhoid vaccines available in the United States. Both are live virus vaccines, one is an oral vaccine and the other is an injectable vaccine. But are the vaccines effective? According to the CDC both vaccines have failure rates as high as fifty percent.631 The vaccine manufacturer lists neurotropic disease and viscerotropic disease as side effects from the vaccine.632 Neurotropic disease is inflammation of the brain caused by a viral infection—often fatal. Viscerotropic disease starts out mild with symptoms such as headache, muscle pain and fatigue, and then rapidly progressing into multiple organ system failure and death.633
The chances of a traveler contracting typhoid fever are minute. There are twenty two million cases of the infection reported each year.634 Only 400 of these cases occur in travelers who have traveled outside the United States.635 So if a person is planning on traveling to an area where typhoid fever is common, they have a 99.99819 percent chance of avoiding the infection.
