Zimbabwe Making All-Out Effort to Prevent New Cholera Outbreak

by Sreeraman on  October 19, 2009 at 4:59 PM General Health News
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Workers trudge through foul-smelling mud in a trench seeping with clean drinking water and raw sewage in one of the Harare neighbourhoods hardest hit by last year's cholera epidemic.

The repair work is a race against time to patch the city's sewage system before the rainy season begins in November, when health workers fear the water-borne disease could erupt again.

The three-metre (10-foot) deep trench cuts through Usuf Austin's driveway and runs the length of his block, forcing his family to leap across the hole to get into their house.

But he's happy for the crew to replace the leaky pipes blamed for fueling the epidemic that killed more than 4,200 people and sickened nearly 100,000.

"The sewage was coming out day in and day out, 24 hours a day" when cholera first struck in August 2008, he said.

"This sewage water mixes with the rain water during the rainy season," he added.

The epidemic erupted last year as post-election violence swept Zimbabwe, already crippled by a decade of economic decline blamed on controversial reforms by autocratic President Robert Mugabe.

The country's collapsing public infrastructure added to chronically overburdened sewer systems and water shortages. This in turn gave free rein to the diarrhoeal disease, which is easily preventable with clean water and proper sewage but thrives in places without proper sanitation.

The crew on Austin's road is one of dozens tearing up streets around the Zimbabwe capital, including much of the city centre, in a donor-funded drive to fix the worst of the sewer problems.

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