Reply to comment on: The diagnosis of typhoid fever in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

摘要

We thank Arya and Agarwal for their relevant comments on our paper about the diagnosis of typhoid fever.Arya and Agarwal propose a system of centripetal external quality assessment (EQA) - in which peripheral laboratories submit samples for reassessment to an intermediate/central laboratory - for improving the quality of the Widal test. In addition, they provide technical comments on the slide agglutination method of the Widal test and refer to the more recent immunochromatographic assays for detection of Salmonella Typhi and S. paratyphi antibodies, deployed in the physician's surgery or in field conditions.