The fecal-oral cycle of children of low and high socio-economic (SES) level who had had typhoid fever was studied to discover what behaviours might facilitate contagion. The saiple was made up of 80 families: (A) 20 of low SES and 20 of high SES who had had typhoid fever at most 6 months prior to beginning the study; (B) 20 low SES and 20 high SES, who had not had the disease and had not bean vaccinated against it, used as controls. All the children had been in the school system for one or two years and were matched according to school and class. A structured interview was applied at home to observe the hygiene of the toilet, kitchen and the preparation of foods. The data was analyzed through indexes. The results indicate that the hygiene of the toilet bowl and accessories, general bathroom and of the dish-washer was significantly poorer in Group A than in B (p<.002, p<.01 and p<.009, respectively). They differ in the preparation of foods in that the handlers of Group A washed their hands after touching something dirty less (p<.03) and shewed a general food preparaticn index that was significantly lower (p<.02) than these of Group B. These results would indicate that the families with a school child who had had typhoid fever had poor hygiene habits which could facilitate the transmission of diseases of the fecal-oral cycle, independently of the SES.
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