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Thousands at risk in Mpumalanga
28/02/2007 08:40 - (SA)
Zinkie Sithole
Nelspruit - Mpumalanga's health department head, Confidence Moloko, has finally agreed to release a damning forensic report that identifies areas in the province where waterborne diseases pose a high risk.
The announcement comes just days after Premier Thabang Makwetla told a packed audience at the opening of the Mpumalanga legislature on Friday that everyone in the province will have safe drinking water by 2010.
At present an estimated 171 586 households in the province are in danger of contracting waterborne diseases because they fetch their water from dirty streams or share water sources with livestock.
Moloko said on Tuesday that the report - which officials have kept under wraps for the past two years, leaving communities unaware of the dangers posed by contaminated water - would be released in the public interest.
Vulnerable water source
"This report was not meant to be released [to the public] but the interest in it has [forced] us to reconsider," he said. "It is being used to assist the government to bring safe water to these communities."
The secret report was commissioned by Makwetla after the Delmas typhoid outbreak in 2005. The outbreak resulted in 3 500 confirmed cases of diarrhoea and 610 cases of typhoid after local municipal water supplies became contaminated with human faeces. According to official reports, five people died of typhoid, but Aids activists put the figure at around 40.
The Nkomazi municipality, situated about 100km from Nelspruit, is also vulnerable to outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne illnesses due to massive faecal contamination of groundwater. About 1 745 cholera cases and 29 deaths were reported in the area in 2004. The provincial health department said this was the second worst cholera outbreak in South Africa's history.
The biggest outbreak was recorded in northern KwaZulu-Natal in 2000, when over 110 000 cases of cholera were reported and more than 230 people died. According to the United Nations' World Health Organisation, the KwaZulu-Natal outbreak accounted for 80 percent of all cholera cases recorded worldwide between August 2000 and August 2001.
Moloko said before the Mpumalanga report was released to the public it would be discussed by MECs belonging to the social services cluster. The cluster is made up of the departments of education, health and social development and culture, sport and recreation.
- African Eye
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