HARARE - Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday that the toll from Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic was much higher than the more than 80 000 infections and close to 4 000 deaths reported since the outbreak began last August.Tsvangirai said massive resources were required to rehabilitate the
country's collapsed health infrastructure and to woo back skilled
workers who left the country for better paying jobs abroad.
We have had a clear warning of the national trauma of over 85 000
reported cases of cholera and 4 000 reported deaths by the end of
February 2009. This is most likely a dramatic underestimate of the real
figures given the unreported cases and deaths in communities,
Tsvangirai told an emergency health summit in Harare.
The cholera epidemic that the World Health Organisation says is the
worst outbreak of the disease in Africa in 15 years has highlighted the
collapse of Zimbabwe's once brilliant economy and infrastructure over
the past decade and also seen in hyperinflation, food shortages,
deepening poverty and rising joblessness.
Tsvangirai, who last month formed a power-sharing government with
President Robert Mugabe to tackle the crisis, said it would be possible
to revive Zimbabwe's health sector to its former glory as one of the
best in Africa only if the unity government implemented necessary
reforms to stabilise the economy and the political environment.
The greatest improvements in health, including in our health sector,
will come from improvements in political stability and economic
progress, he said.
Analysts say the unity government between Mugabe, Tsvangirai and
another former opposition leader, Arthur Mutambara, offers Zimbabwe its
best opportunity in a decade to end its crisis and begin on a new path
to recovery.
The unity government has pledged to get teachers, doctors, nurses and
all civil servants back at work as part of a drive to get Zimbabwe
functioning again and on the road to recovery. Last week the government
paid every civil servant US$100 living allowance, keeping a promise to
reward public workers in hard cash.
However analysts say the Harare administration's ability to get
Zimbabwe functioning again hinges on its ability to raise financial
support from rich Western countries that have however said they will
not immediately help until they are convinced Mugabe is committed to
genuinely share power with Tsvangirai.
ZimOnline
Post published in: Analysis