AP Features, February 2nd, 2007
Nineteen people have contracted cholera in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, in the first outbreak of the often-deadly disease in the city in a year, Zimbabwe state radio reported Friday.
The 19 are from the impoverished eastern townships of Mabvuku and Tafara, where residents have gone without clean running water for days and have been using unprotected wells, the report said.
Health officials have been sent to the area to hand out water purification tablets. Zimbabwean Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa said the situation was "under control," the report added.
The first cholera case was diagnosed last Thursday. Since then, the number of those affected has risen steadily. State media suggested the cholera germ was brought by truck drivers from Malawi.
Cholera, a highly infectious diarrheal disease that can kill within hours if not treated, spreads quickly in damp and unhygienic conditions and where water supplies are unreliable.
Harare once was known as the Sunshine City because of its cleanliness, but six years of economic decline have taken their toll. In many suburbs, garbage goes uncollected for weeks because the authorities have no fuel to power waste collection, while sewage flows freely from broken pipes authorities say they have no money to fix.
Last month, the state-run water authority ZINWA warned that a breakdown at a major sewage treatment plant had left it spewing 72 mega-liters of raw sewage per day into a river that feeds into Lake Chivero, Harare's main source of drinking water.
Those who have contracted cholera were being treated in dedicated wards at an infectious diseases hospital in Harare, reports said.
Earlier this week, the health minister toured an informal settlement near Mabvuku where some of the latest cholera cases are believed to have occurred. More than 330 families are staying in tents and shelters at Caledonia Farm settlement, sharing just 69 toilets, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Thursday.
Hundreds of Zimbabweans were forcibly taken to Caledonia Farm in June 2005 after police destroyed their shacks and cottages in a controversial campaign of slum clearances that earned Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe international condemnation. Very few have been allocated new homes.
An outbreak of cholera in Harare's Glen View township killed three people in January 2006, forcing the authorities to temporarily shut down the capital's main food and vegetable market.
