For 34-year-old software architect Rahul Devan, it started not with a roar, but with a mild, deceptive rumble. Walking home after a late shift in Thiruvananthapuram, he had stopped by a popular local eatery for a chicken shawarma wrap. It was a routine choice, one made by thousands of commuters every evening.
“By the next afternoon, I felt a slight chill,” Rahul recalls, speaking from his hospital bed, his face pale and visibly drained. “I figured it was just standard indigestion or exhaustion. I took an antacid and tried to sleep it off. I had no idea my body was already losing a war to an organism I couldn’t even see.”
What Rahul had actually ingested was Shigella — a hyper-contagious bacterial pathogen that turns the human digestive system into a site of rapid, catastrophic damage. Unlike common food poisoning agents like Salmonella, which require a person to swallow hundreds of thousands of bacteria to fall ill, Shigella needs an infectious dose of as few as 10 individual organisms to trigger a full-blown medical crisis.
This extreme potency is explained by how aggressively the bacteria attacks the body. “Shigella behaves differently from routine food poisoning. The organism doesn’t merely pass through the intestine – it invades the lining of the colon, triggering a severe inflammatory response that causes fever, cramps, and sometimes blood in the stool,” explains Dr Vinod Xavier, consultant of internal medicine at Aster Medcity, Kochi.
By midnight, the deception was over. The bacteria had successfully navigated Rahul’s stomach acid, reached his large intestine, and begun invading the cellular lining of his colon.
“The pain woke me up. It wasn’t a normal stomach ache; it felt like a sequence of intense, white-hot muscle spasms slicing through my abdomen,” Rahul says. Within hours, he was trapped in a relentless cycle of vomiting and severe diarrhoea. By morning, his symptoms had escalated into classic bacillary dysentery — a bacterial infection of the intestines. “When I looked down and saw that I was passing nothing but pure mucous and blood, panic set in. My fever shot up to 103°F. I was so weak I had to crawl to the bathroom.”
Distinguishing these aggressive symptoms from everyday stomach bugs is crucial for timely medical intervention. “The rough picture that should raise suspicion is a high fever, painful cramps, and frequent, small, bloody or mucousy stools. Plain food poisoning more often means large watery stools and prominent vomiting,” explains Dr Muhammed Niyas, consultant in the department of infectious diseases at KIMSHEALTH, Thiruvananthapuram.
When his roommate rushed him to the emergency room, clinicians immediately recognised the signs of acute shigellosis. Rahul was profoundly dehydrated, his blood pressure was dropping dangerously, and his kidneys were straining under the systemic shock. He was placed on intravenous fluids to restore his electrolyte balance and isolated to prevent further transmission. For three days, he remained tethered to IV lines, receiving a targeted course of antibiotics while hospital staff meticulously tracked his renal function.
The physical toll was massive. He lost nearly 4kg in less than a week, and the sheer exhaustion left him unable to stand unassisted for days. Even as his fever broke and the agonising cramps finally subsided into a dull ache, the psychological impact lingered.
“You become intensely aware of how fragile your health is,” Rahul reflects, looking at his half-empty glass of boiled water. “I used to eat street food without a second thought. Now, the mere thought of ordering food from an unverified kitchen makes me anxious. You realise that a single unwashed hand or a minute of improper refrigeration by someone you’ve never met can put you in an ICU.”
As he prepares for discharge, Rahul faces a slow, multi-week recovery involving strict dietary restrictions and probiotics to rebuild his decimated gut flora. “This isn’t over when you walk out the door,” he says quietly. “Your body reminds you of it every single day.”
Outbreak in Kerala: 59 cases and four deaths in June
The recent Shigella outbreak in Kerala has put public health authorities on high alert after a surge in highly contagious shigellosis cases across districts like Kozhikode, Wayanad and Thiruvananthapuram. Health officials trace the spike to localised groundwater contamination in private wells and unhygienic practices in commercial food outlets. In response, the state Health Department has launched rigorous containment measures—including intensive well chlorination, food safety inspections, and the distribution of oral rehydration solution (ORS)—while urging the public to strictly consume boiled drinking water and practice thorough hand hygiene.