HEALTH-CONGO: Typhoid Fever Linked to Fast Food

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lyne Mikangou

BRAZZAVILLE, Jan 14 2003 (IPS) - With little awareness of the risks of typhoid fever, residents of Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, buy fast foods from makeshift lunch counters that have sprung up all over the city.

The fast food restaurants, which serve tasty snacks, are often found under trees next to a mound of rotting garbage. Usually, they consist of a grill and several wooden boards set up to hold a sheet of corrugated metal roofing.

The menu comprises chicken drumsticks, turkey wings, gizzards, beans and cassava which are often served as takeaways. Brazzaville residents, who consume the fast food, have little concern for their safety.

Dr Gabriel Eleka, head of Brazzaville health department, says the residents of the city seem to have turned into an ‘’open-air disease consumers”.

‘’The Congolese are buying disease,” he warns.

Despite the warnings, Bienvenu Afalewou, a fashion designer, enjoys fast food. ‘’True, the preparation of these foods and the way they are un-hygienically displayed is a real health problem. But I eat them because they’re fast and I’m hard pressed for time,” he confesses.

‘’I like fast food,” he says. ‘’For me, it’s a choice, a preference.”

Food sold by street vendors is the cause of typhoid fever that has appeared in Brazzaville. The infection is on its way to becoming the fourth most likely cause of health problems and death, after malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Typhoid fever is caused by a lack of hygiene. ‘’In Brazzaville, at the end of the 1997 civil war, residents lived in very dirty conditions. And, the big local markets lack the means to dispose of their garbage hygienically,” says Dr Eleka.

‘’The food in those markets is on display and exposed to dust and flies. And the Congolese, who are quite poor, are forced to economise where they can. As a result, they often end up bringing home a disease through the food they purchase,” he explains.

As a result, the most commonly run test in Brazzaville is for typhoid.

‘’It became the most frequently run tests after the 1997-1998 civil war. Positive result during the 1997-1998 civil war was an excellent indicator of how much Congo’s health situations had deteriorated. Worst, the disease is endemic all year long,” says Dr Henry Joseph Para, director general of the National Laboratory of Public Health in Brazzaville.

Positive result test jumped from 25.28 percent in 1997 to 48.85 percent in 2000, although it descended slightly in 2001 to 46.64 percent. This small decrease was due to the anti-typhoid vaccination campaigns last year.

Alain Moka, the Minister of Health and Population, says typhoid fever is indicative of a lack of cleanliness and hygiene. Official figures show that only 14 percent of city dwellers and 7 percent of rural residents live in healthy environments.

Up to 70 percent of Congolese live below the poverty line of one U.S. dollar a day and 46 percent of the residents of Brazzaville are unused to using trash bins, according to official figures.

The population of the Congo is 3.2 million, out of which 900,000 live in Brazzaville.

‘’Vaccinations alone are useless if people do not observe the basic rules of hygiene, don’t make a habit of washing their hands before eating, and don ‘t wash their vegetables before eating them. Typhoid is a problem that can be resolved simply by better hygiene,” says Moka.

Dieudonne Mousanna, president of the Brazzaville-based consumer federation, says ‘’the best way to protect the residents of Brazzaville from contaminated foods is to give the health department the resources it needs to do its job properly, which consists of prohibiting the sale of products unsuitable for human consumption”.

Concurring, some Congolese believe working with community leaders will reduce the spread of the disease. They urge the government to form health committees to educate the population about the risks of living in unclean conditions.