The ICRC has started distributing food to 6 300 detainees. Kitchens, sanitation facilities, and water supply systems will be upgraded as well in the near future.
“We are working closely with the prison authorities to improve the situation for the most vulnerable detainees,” Thomas Merkelbach, head of the ICRC’s team in Harare said in statement.
An ICRC official said the food delivery was based on an assessment it conducted that highlighted the needs within the prisons. The agency was granted access to the prisons in April by the new coalition government in Zimbabwe.
The ICRC, as policy, does not release information based on the access it is given to prisoners and detainees. It says this confidentiality is how it gains entrance to places that would otherwise be closed off.
Skeletal prisoners
A South African documentary film released earlier this year showed scores of skeletal prisoners in Zimbabwe dressed in rags and reportedly dying of malnutrition and HIV/Aids in filthy institutions without food, medication or basic cleaning materials.
The ICRC was granted access to the prisons, it appeared, shortly after the film was broadcast.
Prison support groups report that 20 of the country’s 14 000 inmates die each day.
Also planned for the prisons, the organisation said, are programmes to prevent the “transmission of communicable disease and make sure that detainees receive the treatment they require in event of any outbreak of disease such as cholera”.
The ICRC’s sister organisation, the Federation of Red Cross Societies, has warned that most likely next week Zimbabwe will report that the latest cholera outbreak has infected 100 000 people since late last year.
The situation in the prisons, aid workers said, was a mirror of the poor state of Zimbabwe’s economy and lack of ability to feed its population. More than half the people receive handouts from the World Food Programme.
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