SCIENTISTS have made a breakthrough in helping tackle typhoid among slum dwellers.

The University of Brighton team won funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to carry out the work.

Focusing on people living in the Indian city of Kolkata, researchers shared the university’s methods of tracking micro-organisms to their source with Indian and US scientists.

They managed to use the method successfully for the first time to identify pollution of human origin in what is India’s second largest city.

James Ebdon, reader in the university’s school of environment and technology, said: “This breakthrough is an important first step in a three-year project to map environmental transmission routes of typhoid in urban India by combining novel microbiological protocols with social science approaches.”

Typhoid is a bacterial infection that can spread throughout the body, affecting many organs and without prompt treatment can be fatal.

It remains one of the most serious health burdens in India, particularly for children, and is compounded by poverty, inadequate water supply and poor sanitation.

It is hoped the breakthrough research by the Brighton scientists will demonstrate how typhoid spreads through poor urban communities so that more effective barriers to the disease can be put in place.

The work in India is the latest example of the Brighton team’s efforts to support disease prevention in developing countries.

Previously the team played a key role in responding to the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti and its advice was later sought by the World Health Organisation in response to the West African ebola outbreak.

Dr Ebdon led the Kolkata work, which is part of the Sanipath Typhoid project, run by the Global Centre for Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at Emory University in Atlanta.

He works alongside the University of Brighton’s Diogo Trajano, a research fellow in the school of environment and technology, who has made similar progress in Africa, with funding from the Medical Research Council.

Huw Taylor, the university’s professor of microbial ecology, accompanied Dr Ebdon in India.

“He said: “This is a very exciting step forward for water and sanitation research at the university.

“In recent years we have become widely recognised for the global impact of our work but James’s success in India, along with Diogo’s advances in rural Kenya, are now using Brighton’s practical knowledge for the benefit of those in greatest need.”