Prevention and treatment of Cholera in Zimbabwe

Other  people become infected when those germs are eaten or drunk. You may 

think "I don’t eat diarrhoea!" but those germs can very easily end up 

in peoples’ drinking water or on their food. Imagine someone with 

diarrhoea opens their bowels and then doesn’t wash their hands 

properly. If that person then makes some food, or shakes hands with 

someone else, the cholera germs can be spread.

So it is easy to see how to stop the spread of cholera. Achieving 

this in Zimbabwe may be more difficult but here are the principles:

1) Always try to defecate in a sanitary place and far away from 

peoples’ drinking water.

2) Wash your hands after going to the toilet.

3) Wash your hands before cooking or preparing food. Don’t eat food 

that you can’t trust.

4) Try to drink safe water only. Ideally it will have been boiled for 

3 minutes. If this is too difficult or expensive even filtering the 

water through a cloth greatly reduces the chance of cholera. The 

ideal cloth is a fine woven cloth but Zimbabweans may find that a 

cotton sheet or T shirt, folded over 8-10 times is the best they can do.

5) Most people who are infected with cholera have no symptoms but are 

still excreting the germs in the ‘normal’ stools. So don’t be  complacent.

6) Of those people who become sick, 80% have mild diarrhoea only. But 

20 % of people, especially those with AIDS or malnourishment, can 

become very sick just hours after the germs get inside their gut. 

These people develop very severe diarrhoea and if their oral 

rehydration does not keep up with their diarrhoea they will die quickly.

7) The best way of rehydrating people is to give them Oral 

Rehydration Solution (ORS) made by adding 8 level teaspoons of sugar 

and 1 level teaspoon of salt to 1 litre of thoroughly boiled water. 

Mashed banana or orange can be added for taste. The volume of ORS 

needs to slightly exceed the volume of diarrhoea. It is easier to 

tolerate lots of little drinks of ORS than having large quantities at 

once.

8) A small minority of patients may need intravenous rehydration via 

a drip but most patients do better with Oral Rehydration. Antibiotics 

(such as cotrimoxazole or tetracycline) make only a small difference 

to the disease : the most important treatment is oral rehydration.

There is a lot of information available on the internet on the World 

Health Organisation, Centre for Disease Control and Emedicine sites 

on the internet for those interested.