Zimbabwe Cholera deaths to double
Zimbabwe faces 55,000 more cholera cases as the disease moves from town to countryside.
Zimbabwe faces 55,000 more cholera cases as the disease moves from town to countryside.
It comes the day after an agreement allowing opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to become Zimbabwe’s prime minister. Mr Tsvangirai won the first round of presidential elections last March, but pulled out of a run-off against Mr Mugabe in June, blaming state-sponsored violence against his supporters.
Meanwhile the country has faced runaway inflation, an escalating food crisis and a collapse in its health and education systems.
A Cholera outbreak, fuelled by the collapse of infrastructure, has infected nearly 66,000 people and killed more than 3,300. And the death toll is predicted to double in the next few months as up to 55,000 more people contract the disease, it emerged today (Friday)
Between 32,000 and 55,000 more cases are forecast, according to a private World Health Organisation memo seen by The Times.
The outbreak is one of the worst recorded. Last week there were 8,578 new cases and 324 deaths. “We are at our wits’ end,” one senior aid worker told the newspaper. “We are not yet winning the battle,” admitted Custodia Mandlhate, the WHO representative in Zimbabwe.
Aid organisations, working with Zimbabwe’s skeletal health service, have made massive efforts to counter the epidemic. They have helped to open 235 cholera treatment centres, delivered clean water, unblocked sewers, and handed out thousands of hygiene kits, buckets, water purification tablets and leaflets.
In urban areas this has worked. But Cholera is erupting instead in rural areas, where it is far harder to control. Infections soared after Zimbabweans returned to their villages en masse for Christmas.
In a population weakened by hunger – cholera can kill in four to six hours. More than 70 per cent of Zimbabwe’s victims are now dying in their communities – meaning that they are unable to reach help at cholera centres. Villages are using ox carts instead of ambulances to carry away their dead, a BBC correspondent reported.
SOS Children has started community outreach programmes and medical centres which specialise in providing care for children and their families across Zimbabwe. SOS Children provides clothes, food, school fees, medical treatment, housing improvements and counselling, to more than 5000 children a year in Zimbabwe.
Written by Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children
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