High infant mortality rates in developing countries, often more than ten-fold greater than in industrialized countries, are attributed in good part to inadequate water supply and sanitation. That some 1.5 billion people are estimated to lack reasonable access to safe water led the United Nations on 10 Nov 1980 to inaugurate the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade. It is frequently assumed that the only cause of malnutrition is a failure to consume an adequate diet because of the unavailability of food. This unwarranted assumption may result in overlooking the primary factor responsible in many cases of malnutrition. Poverty, famine, ignorance, lack of money to buy food, poor dietary habits, and infectious diseases lead to widespread malnutrition in some population groups, even in the presence of an apparently adequate food supply.
Obesity is frequently due to malnutrition.
Typhus does not equal typhoid, of course, but it is common to confuse the two diseases due to the similarity in their names. With disruption of usual water supply and sewage disposal, as would occur under disaster situations of war, earthquake or hurricane, and concomitant disruption of controls on food and water, transmission of typhoid fever may occur if there are active cases or carriers in a displaced population. There were probably both active cases and carriers of typhoid at the time and place you became ill. Efforts to restore safe drinking water supplies and excreta disposal facilities are more appropriate than massive typhoid vaccination. Vaccination of such populations is generally not recommended.