The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
(IFRC) said the spread of cholera into Zimbabwe’s remote rural areas
had made it increasingly hard to control and contain the epidemic.
"We have a battle on many fronts," IFRC’s head of operations for Africa
John Roche told reporters, adding that aid workers were distributing
water purification sachets door-to-door to confront "effectively many
outbreaks"
of cholera across the economically stricken country.
"Zambia and Mozambique cases are also on the increase," he said.
South Africa is also at risk from the spreading epidemic in Zimbabwe,
where there are now "a multitude of small epidemics that are hard to
reach," said World Health Organisation (WHO) official Dominique Legros.
"It is a possibility that the outbreak will further spread to South Africa,"
Legros said, although he acknowledged that surveillance systems were in
place at the border and Zimbabwe’s neighbours have stronger and more
functional health systems that should be able to prevent and treat
cholera much more effectively.
The WHO that is leading efforts to combat cholera in Zimbabwe said on
Monday that the epidemic had killed 3 397 people out of 69 317 cases
recorded since the start of the epidemic last August.
The international health watchdog, which described Zimbabwe’s cholera
epidemic as the deadliest outbreak of the disease in Africa in 15
years, had previously said its experts expected that up to 60 000
people could be infected with cholera in the worst-case scenario –
which is turning out to have been a gross underestimation of the extent
of the epidemic.
Zimbabwe’s public health sector, once among the best on the continent,
has collapsed due to years of under-funding and mismanagement while
thousands of doctors, nurses and other skilled professions have left
the industry going abroad where salaries and working conditions are
better.
The collapse of the public health – that services the majority of
Zimbabweans – has helped worsen the cholera outbreak with many of the
victims unable to get treatment either because there were no drugs in
state hospitals or because there were no nurses and doctors.
Zimbabweans hope a power-sharing government between President Robert
Mugabe and the opposition will help ease the political situation and
allow the country to focus on tackling the cholera epidemic, among a
host of troubles afflicting the country after nearly a decade of
recession.
ZimOnline
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