[Typhoid fever in children in Tananarive (Madagascar). Comments on 97 cases]

97 cases of typhoïd fever in child are reported. This disease remains frequent and even severe in tropical zone where its evolution is of endemoepidemic type. Established fever, in spite of an appropriate treatment, is one of the main features of this disease. A certain number of clinical signs call for it; although classical, some others are less significant. Complications are frequent, without any correlation between the date of hospitalizing and the beginning of the disease. They are sometimes severe but mortality rate during hospitalization is quite low. Leukoneutropenia and thrombopenia are both exceptional. Blood culture and serology are always the background of any diagnosis, the latter appearing to the authors much more valuable than the former. Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprime is an antibiotic to be recommended in first instance. Precocity of treatment has no influence on the time of apyrexia is appearing. If hopes put on oral vaccine could be confirmed, so it might be used on a large scale for children living in endemia zones.