Harare, Zimbabwe – When Priscilla Moyo’s husband Brian returned to his home in Harare from Mvurwi, about 100 kilometers north of the capital, on Sunday night, he appeared to be in good spirits. By 11pm, he was battling diarrhea.
When the situation did not change on Tuesday morning, Moyo, 39, took him to a nearby clinic in Budiriro, a suburb of the city where they live. Upon her arrival, she was told that her husband had cholera.
“He's being treated there now,” she says despondently, pointing toward the gray tent that is the clinic's makeshift treatment ward. “He's on an IV and we've been told he might be able to go home today.”
A flood of cholera cases has hit 10 Zimbabwean provinces, and health facilities in the southern African country have been overwhelmed. Some patients, like Brian, have recovered.
Some were not so lucky.
Jessica Mzambezi, a young mother living in the same suburb, lost her two-year-old son to cholera. “The sewer in my area burst and my son died. The authorities did not take care of the sewer for two weeks,” she told Al Jazeera.
As of Tuesday, Zimbabwe had recorded 25,780 cholera cases since the outbreak began last year. Official government figures put the death toll at 470, but the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which works with Zimbabwean authorities to coordinate funding for anti-cholera campaigns, puts the number at 528. Children remain the most vulnerable, with one-third of all cases affecting young people under the age of 15.
And many Zimbabweans say the government is to blame.
deep-rooted problems
Zimbabwe's sewage system, part of an infrastructure inherited from colonial times, has been overwhelmed as the population has grown from about 3.7 million in 1960 to 17 million today. Additionally, because infrastructure has not been updated due to the economic downturn, drinking water continues to be unavailable in many areas of the country.
That makes it easier for cholera, an infectious disease transmitted primarily through contaminated water and food, to spread quickly, experts say.
In 2008, as many as 4,000 people died from cholera in the country during what is considered one of the worst episodes of the cholera epidemic on the continent. Then, as now, public health crises were caused by poor sanitation and a lack of clean water. In Zimbabwe, the world's worst hyperinflation crisis has soared, reaching up to 79.6 billion percent month-on-month, rendering the local currency useless and exacerbating a collapsed health system.
The government of then-President Robert Mugabe blamed Western governments for the disease outbreak. Senior administration officials said the cholera outbreak was the result of “serious biochemical warfare” and “calculated racist terrorist attacks” waged against Zimbabweans.
More than 15 years later, the capital is once again facing a public health crisis and once again becoming a hotspot.
While the number of infected people is increasing nationwide, Harare state, the most populous state in the country, has the highest concentration of new infections, accounting for one-third of the total.
A short drive through the city's southern suburbs, such as Budirillo, Glenview and Highfield, reveals dozens of tents donated by the World Health Organization (WHO), operated by local medical professionals.
Zimbabwean authorities are also distributing vaccines to minimize the impact of the outbreak. The country has received 97% of the 2.3 million vaccine doses approved by the International Coordination Group on Vaccine Delivery (ICG) as of February 12, with more expected later in the month. According to UNICEF, as of February 14, 1.5 million people (67% of the target population) had been vaccinated with oral cholera vaccine (OCV).
In January, the Ministry of Health launched a campaign called “Chenesa'', named after the Shona word for “cleaning'', after residents used undesignated garbage dumps to deal with piles of garbage.・Started Operation Harare. Some say that garbage piled up because not enough resources were allocated on time to begin with.
“It's just fiction.”
But there are concerns that mitigation efforts are coming too slowly and, just as importantly, not addressing the root of the problem. Some experts and activists argue that authorities have not yet learned lessons from the past.
Joylene Nyachuru, a Glenview resident and leader of the Regional Water Alliance, is one of them. She blames local and central governments for the recent outbreak.
“More could have been done to minimize the impact of cholera on the population by coming together to stop sewage leaks, and by renovating old sewage infrastructure that continues to break down,” Nyachulu told Al Jazeera. We should have cooperated.”
“There are 12,800 homes in Glenview, and each home is home to four to five families. This means each home has 15 to 20 people using the same home and the same bathroom. ” she said, adding that authorities must provide clean drinking water to all residents of the city to control cholera.
The city has not pumped water to many households in Harare for years. Currently, water runs from the taps once a week in most southern suburbs. Despite government intervention, trash is still common on street corners.
According to Nyachuru, this is also exacerbating the cholera situation.
Precious Shumba, director of the nonprofit Harare Residents Trust, agrees.
“The big problem is that underground water and sewage pipes are aging and clogged with sand, resulting in numerous leaks along the water and sewage infrastructure network,” Shumba told Al Jazeera. It added that a sewer burst in an industrial area also remained unrepaired for a long time. period.
However, Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume said that in addition to the vaccination programme, city authorities were stepping up sewer repairs and working to improve the city's drinking water supply. The situation will improve soon, he told Al Jazeera.
“The numbers have decreased significantly and we are confident that we can turn the tide on cholera,” Mahume said.
But his comments did little to soothe most of the city's residents, who say they have become accustomed to running sewage and having to find solutions on their own.
“On the ground, the authorities are not doing anything… To say that the city will or is solving our problems is just a fiction,” Nyachuru said. “They are [officials] He was only on the ground during Operation Chenesa-Harare. After the campaign, nothing has happened. ”