Municipal clinics shutdown, as cholera disaster quickly spreads
So the jokes are set to resume again at a date to be announced this week in South Africa. The talks, now called jokes in street lingo, come at time when the country is in a deeper mess and deepening by the day. An estimated number of more than 200 people have lost their lives due to a deadly cholera epidemic that is set to worsen as the rains continue to fall mercilessly on a country in distress.
It should be highlighted that most of Harare’s high density suburbs don’t have clean running water and are plagued with burst sewer pipes. I have had the opportunity of driving through these populated urban settlements from Mabvuku, Tafara , Warren Park, Budiriro, Sunningdale, Mufakose, Chitungwiza, Seke and Mbare to mention a few and the likelihood of cholera spreading to these areas and killing more people is indeed very real as service delivery is very much non existent.
A visit to Mbare’s neglected Matapi Hostels will surely indicate the dire situation Harare residents are currently exposed to. Raw sewerage flows freely in the area, and less than a km away is the biggest market in Harare that supplies fresh produce to all of Harare’s high density areas. The intermittent water crisis has reached areas like Avenues and Avondale where it was previously non existent. The situation is heartbreaking as the relevant authorities don’t care in any sort of way the welfare of Harare’s vulnerable residents and my plea is to any organizations out there to please help curb the spread of the cholera outbreak before more lives are lost. Basing on the situation on the ground the outbreak is guaranteed to spread and cause deaths of unimagined proportions if concrete action is not taken at this juncture.
Almost all of the government run municipal clinics located in Harare’s high density suburbs have shutdown due to shortage of medicine and medical personnel as the medical system completely crumbles. Desperate women with babies in the arms and on their backs thronged a particular church organization close to the city centre in search of medical aid for their young children sick with cholera (depeicted in the images).
The situation is bad as the disease is now virtually spreading to the majority of the city’s high density suburbs I mentioned boveg. In some areas that still have erratic water supplies, the water is already contaminated and I have just learnt that maggots came out of a tap at a certain business premises in located in the city’s centre after a water cut and a resumption of supplies. A disaster of an enormous magnitude is on our hands and the health delivery system which collapsed prior to this outbreak has been overwhelmed in a short space of time. Devastating consequences are guaranteed in the following week if extra ordinary action is not taken. God help us.
The administration does not care of the welfare of the people and is set to continue playing down the threats this disease is posing to the majority of Harare’s urban populace. A disaster should have been declared already and the civil protection unit deployed ages ago to try and contain the epidemic but the authorities continue downplaying the undeniable threat residents are facing.
Why they are willing to sacrifice the lives of so many innocent souls to tie political ends boggles the mind? A line should have been long drawn a long time back and political games should have had their own defined limits. But lies are being fed to the local, regional and international communities downplaying the catastrophe befalling the nation.
The Zanu PF-led administration lost touch with reality a long time back and has long considered urbanites supporters of the MDC thereby effectively labeling enemies of the state. The past 28 years of Mugabe’s rule are filled with tones of evidence that shows what Zanu PF does to people considered enemies of the state. 28 years is a long time back, scores of innocent souls were murdered by government agents and Zanu PF supporters countrywide post March 29 and ahead of the June runoff and what was the administration saying at that time?
Denials, denials and more denials on the occurrence of political violence targeting MDC supporters while some of us witnessed with our own eyes the results of the vicious onslaught, burying our murdered parents and colleagues along the way. Those non governmental organizations with the capacity to help should do so and not wait for the Zanu administration to request for help from them, for it will not.
November 25th, 2008 08:28
It is heartbreaking that this government does not want to help its people. Living in the United States has shielded me from much of the health epidemics around the world. To me, clean drinking water and sanitary conditions are rights, but to the people of Harare these are probably a luxury. I agree that swift action is necessary in order to save lives, and i think that a non-governmental organization would help control this outbreak. However, I do not feel that is will stop future outbreaks of cholera or the spread of many other diseases. In order to improve the overall health of its people the government needs to get involved, and get education about preventative treatments that will halt future epidemics. An improved sewage system is needed as well as water sanitation techniques. If the government gets involved and promotes preventative care, then the health of its people will improve.
November 25th, 2008 14:08
@Tellina Zavala -You are certainly right. ZANU PF is in a state of panic. They have never been in opposition before. They need to accept reality. They are now in opposition. They must vacate office forthwith after all necessary hand over and take over and prepare to win the next elections if they are able to reform
It would appear that they are not going to do that without a fight. Thanks to MDC, they are still clean of these issues. My hope is to see the people of Zimbabwe organising themselves to confront this regime particularly as the difference is now the same in that do nothing and you die of hunger and cholera or uprising and you die from shooting but the message would have been conveyed
Lets try it one more time
Mumu MuZimbo hake
November 25th, 2008 19:14
@Tellina Zavala –
Clean water was never a right – many people in the US don’t have it. Clean water in the US is just something so common place that most people don’t even think about it. Turn the tap, out it comes. Some towns it’s city water and you pay for it. Some places it’s the well in your back yard. On the Indian Reservations, sometimes it’s the river a mile from your house, and you boil what you drink.
Clean water isn’t a luxury for the people in Zimbabwe, either. You don’t die if you go without a luxury – that’s part of the definition of “luxury”.
Cholera. That word holds a special terror for me – in college, I had to do a term paper on it. The 1832 outbreak in New York City killed nearly 2% of the people there, and that was with a functioning 1830’s style infrastructure. What could happen in Zimbabwe breaks my heart.
Ironically, when it swept through NYC, it hit the poorer neighborhoods, and the city response was slower because those dying were not politically ‘valuable’. In the 1830s, there was a law that a black man had to have property of $250 to be able to vote, even if here were “free.” The neighborhoods that suffered most were the politically disenfranchised.
It’s like the damned disease seeks the people who are least likely to get help from the ‘powers that be’ in their area.
Part of me wants so desperately for the US to do something – regime change? invade? NGOs can’t help, they get kicked out or abused.
Another part looks at the news from Zimbabwe and says, “There but for the grace of God go I”. Then I look at the US Financial news, and wonder how much grace is left.