“Myadhe joro” a Nepali colloquial name of typhoid fever. Observant patients in the pre-antibiotic era discovered that the fever caused by typhoid usually lasts for about three weeks, that is, the illness came with a certain time frame (myadh). Typhoid Fever is an acute infectious disease caused by the typhoid bacillus Salmonella typhi. It remains an important public health issue in many developing countries including Nepal. As per annual report published by Department of Health Service (DoHS), the prevalence of typhoid fever is very high in different mountains, valleys and southern belts of Nepal from May to August. In addition, it is one of the leading diagnoses of fever in most of the hospitals in Nepal. World Health Organization (WHO) conservatively estimates the annual global incidence of typhoid fever at 0.3%. In some developing countries of Asia and Africa the annual incidence may reach 1%.

The high incidence of diseases starts with monsoon in Nepal where typhoid and diarrhea are the most common. The six year’s data on Typhoid fever found in the annual reports published by the Department of Health Service (DoHS) shows that every year there is an incidence of this disease in every district. It seems like typhoid is our national belongings that we never want to leave it. The six year data shows that the number of cases of typhoid is in increasing at all regions, whereas in case of western region the cases were slightly decreasing on 2008/09 to 2009/10 but in increasing trend after 2009/10. The increasing rate of typhoid cases looks similar in the case of Central and Eastern regions. These data indicate that, the typhoid cases are increasing and it is becoming an urgent public health issue. Nevertheless, the concerned agencies are not seriously putting their efforts to mitigate this problem.

Typhoid is water borne disease attributed to poor sanitary and hygienic conditions including lack of potable water. So far Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) is more focusing on curative aspects than preventive aspects resulting low impact on reduction of typhoid incidences. On other hand Government and other agencies working in WASH sector are busy promoting WASH focusing more on infrastructure and rarely on behavior change linking with health. There is significantly huge investment being made by both health and WASH sector to control water borne diseases including Typhoid in Nepal. Nevertheless, the impact of such investment and efforts is very low as the data of Typhoid incidence is still in increasing trend. To achieve the common goal of reduction of Typhoid incidence, all the sector stakeholders – Health, WASH, and Education should work in the coordinated manner. If this happens then someday we can see “Epidemic free Nepal” in our generation.