Cholera is a vicious disease. It can take a healthy person and kill him or her in a day by rapidly dehydrating them from a massive, watery diarrhea. The resulting electrolyte imbalance can lead to vascular collapse or cardiac arrest. Cholera is usually spread by fecally contaminated drinking water, and hence is completely preventable. It is also easily treatable by keeping the patient hydrated with the oral rehydration therapy, basically minimally fortified water. Yet this preventable and treatable disease is now epidemic in the country of Zimbabwe. Government sources admit to over 400 deaths but the true number is probably nearer 1000, while the number of cases is already likely around 10,000 and climbing. In Zimbabwe cholera is also caused by dictator Robert Mugabe’s vicious misrule, incompetence and corruption. He has killed these cholera victims by his lust for power just as surely as he if he had his Army and police shoot them down. Now the rainy season is upon Zimbabwe and things will likely get even worse:
“What I am afraid of is that now that the rain season has come, all faeces lying in the bushes will be washed into shallow wells and contaminate the water,” [Health] Minister Parirenyatwa said, adding that the management of water and sanitation was primary to the cholera problem.
Zimbabwe has been battling a cholera outbreak over the past month, which has now spread to nine of the country’s 10 provinces and spilt into neighbours South Africa and Botswana, highlighting the effects of a worsening humanitarian and economic crisis in the country.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the epidemic sweeping the southern African country is “the tip of the iceberg” of a major breakdown in health infrastructure, adding that there were very few places in Zimbabwe where people infected with cholera could seek medical attention, and the clinics that are open have far too few health workers to contain the outbreak.
Crisis-torn Zimbabwe is reeling under the effects of a 10-year economic meltdown that has left the country’s once admired health system totally collapsed while doctors and nurses are grossly underpaid because the government does not have money.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has begun delivering food for Zimbabwean doctors, nurses and other health workers who have not been paid because of their country’s economic collapse. (BUA News)
Zimbabwe shouldn’t have cholera any more than Bagdad. Both cases are criminal failures of the civil authorities. This is not a technical problem. It is easily solved with latrines, intact water and sewer pipes, disinfected drinking water. The Harare City Council’s response is to offer free graves for cholera victims, since otherwise no one could afford to be buried. Inflation is running 231 million percent. Yes, that’s right. 231 million percent.
Zimbabwe is a killing field, perpetrated by the Mugabwe regime. If sick Zimbabwans are lucky enough to struggle to the Beit Bridge border with neighboring South Africa they might make it to one of that country’s three dehydration centers. Most aren’t that lucky. We don’t hear much about this story in the US. But it is a horror show. And Robert Mugabe is the horror who runs the show.