Zimbabwe blog: cholera spreading

When Gill complained of severe stomach pains and cramp I feared the worst. She'd just come back from a few days away and the first thought that came to mind was cholera.

Everyone's talking about the disease outbreak and just last week Medicines Sand Frontiers warned that a million people in Harare alone were currently at risk.

The bacterial disease is spreading fast and although it's worst in densely populated areas of Harare, it is also being recorded in many other centres around the country.

The outbreak and spread of cholera seemed inevitable as urban water supplies have all but collapsed over the past few months.

Frequent water cuts, no maintenance, broken pipes and no chemicals to treat raw water have forced people to collect water from wherever they can find it.

As water cuts increased from hours to days, weeks and even months in some places, boreholes and wells on private land came under huge demand.

Morning and evening you see scores of people lining up with 20 litre containers outside urban residences where there are independent water sources.

Shallow wells are also being dug on any available open ground - in fields, on roadsides and even next to cemeteries. The water from these wells and other unprotected pools is often unsuitable for human use, particularly in densely populated areas where burst sewer pipes flow openly in the streets and underground water has been contaminated.

So far the government is playing down the spread and impact of cholera but last week even the State controlled Herald newspaper let slip a photograph of a truck carrying dead bodies (cholera victims) for mass burial.

Then came a report, confirmed by the Master of the High Court, that the Courts had been closed for 2 days because there was no water in the building. Parliament was adjourned after sitting for just one day - because there was no water for hand basins or toilets.

No one knows how many people have died so far but some estimates are of more than 250 people succumbing to the disease. The Chairman of Doctors for Human Rights said that 100 people had died in Budiriro alone, a high density suburb of Harare.

CHRA (Combined Harare Ratepayers Association) have issued an alert that the State have sealed off two cholera control centres (Beatrice Infectious Diseases and Budiriro Polyclinic) from the independent media and NGO's and are downplaying the death toll.

Outside media reports say that patients who make it to collapsing health facilities are having to buy their own gloves, syringes and drips.

Relations of cholera victims who have passed away say there is a dramatic increase in the demand for graves. Lines of newly covered graves stretch out in row after row in the cemeteries - Zimbabwe's victims of HIV/Aids, hunger and now Cholera.

With all this in mind I was immensely relived to see my friend Gill alive and well a couple of days later. Her agonising stomach pain had ended in a bout of severe vomiting - but thankfully not diarrhoea.

Gill said she'd bought suspicious looking raw wheat from some women who had been scavenging for grains on the roadside after a bag had fallen off a truck and she thought this was the most likely cause of her illness.

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