Zim battles cholera crisis
2008-11-21 11:21
Harare - Zimbabwe is struggling to contain "unprecedented" cholera outbreaks that have spread to nine of the country's 10 provinces, state media reported on Friday.
"The ministry is battling to control unprecedented cholera outbreaks affecting the country," health and child welfare minister Dr David Parirenyatwa told the Herald newspaper.
The majority of outbreaks had been traced to the capital Harare, he said.
Figures from several official sources on Thursday totalled about 90 deaths, while the US ambassador to Harare James McGee said the disease had killed at least 294.
"We have a very bad, dire political situation that's ... leading to a food and health emergency, manmade, in this country," McGee told reporters in Washington via satellite television link.
He said he had received reports - though he did not cite the source - that 294 people have died from cholera among 1 200 confirmed cases and 2 500 unconfirmed cases of the water-borne disease.
The Zimbabwe Medical Association said the government should declare a national disaster.
The outbreak and deaths were "foreseeable and thus avoidable" and symptomatic of poor basic water and sanitation facilities, the association was quoted by the Herald as saying.
The newspaper also reported that a hospital in Mutoko, northeast of Harare where three people had died, was contemplating closing due to critical food shortages.
Parirenyatwa admitted "the situation in government hospitals is bad" but hoped food would soon be made available under the inflation battered Reserve Bank programme to ensure Zimbabweans had basic commodities.
Zimbabwe's health system, once among the best in Africa, has collapsed under the weight of the world's highest inflation rate, last estimated at 231 million percent in July.
- AFP