"We plan to manufacture one million tests of VANSCAN Typhoid RT PCR test in our first year in India"

Indian firm Vanguard Diagnostics recently launched the VANSCAN Typhoid RT PCR Test, which is India’s first Typhoid RT PCR test based on patented technology. With typhoid fever being common in developing countries, India is an endemic country for typhoid with a burden of approximately 4.8 million cases per year. Veena Kohli, Chief Executive Officer, Vanguard Diagnostics spoke, at length, with BioSpectrum about the growing cases of typhoid in the country and how the new diagnostic solution can solve this problem. Edited excerpts:

- Dr Manbeena Chawla

Please share some details about the global Typhoid Diagnostics market. Where does India stand in terms of disease cases, diagnostic tests R&D and manufacturing, when compared to other countries? 

Typhoid fever is prevalent in tropical regions such as India, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, and Africa. These countries report more than 75 per cent of typhoid cases around the world. During the year 2019, 9.2 million cases of typhoid fever and 110,000 deaths were reported worldwide with the highest incidence in South East Asia, Eastern Mediterranean and African regions. More than half the deaths were in children under 15 years of age. On average, 12.5 million people are infected with the infection every year. The key limitations to ascertaining the true burden of this disease are the lack of reliable diagnostic tests, systematic surveillance in most countries and masking of the infection by the widespread use of antibiotics.

Although typhoid can prove to be a fatal infection yet there has been negligible focus on the development of reliable diagnostics tests for its detection. The infection is rare in the developed regions of the world, and thus typhoid has never been featured as a disease of focus for these countries.