Zimbabwe: cholera is not going away anytime soon

Zimbabwe’s cholera caseload is expected to top the 100,000 mark [...] amid warnings by aid agencies that although the disease is subsiding, it has not been eradicated and could flare up again. “The epidemic has entrenched itself as Africa’s worst outbreak in more than 15 years,” killing more than 4,300 people* and infecting 98,309* since August 2008, with an “unacceptably high” 4.4 percent death rate, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said in a report, The Spectre of Cholera Remains in Zimbabwe, released on 26 May [2009]. In terms of international norms, a “controlled cholera outbreak” usually leads to a fatality rate of one percent or less.

[...] The severity of Zimbabwe’s epidemic is attributed to the collapse of the water, sanitation and health infrastructure. The conditions that caused the outbreak – the worst on the continent since cholera rampaged through refugee camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1994, killing up to 40,000 people in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide – are still intact. “The eradication of cholera in Zimbabwe, or the complete conclusion to this current epidemic, is unlikely unless the underlying causes of the health crises are addressed,” the IFRC noted in its report.

[...] The rate of cholera infections has been slowed by the end of the rainy season, and a humanitarian response in which thousands of community-based volunteers were mobilised in education drives, nationwide cholera treatment centres were establishment and millions of litres of clean water were distributed, but these are all temporary measures.

[...] The IFRC expressed dismay at the “surprisingly slow donor response” to the cholera outbreak, and said that less than half its original budget of 10.17 million Swiss francs (US$9.35 million) to combat the disease had been covered, resulting in the “premature” scaling-down of cholera-related assistance. “But while the international community continues to wrestle with the politics of Zimbabwe, Zimbabweans are still being infected,” it commented.

“The steady decline in the spread of the illness should not be seen as a complete victory,” the IFRC urged. “Unless significant efforts are made to rehabilitate at least some components of the country’s degraded infrastructure, communities remain vulnerable to further and severe outbreaks.”

Source: IRIN, 26 May 2009

* The official government/WHO figures, as of 9 June 2009, put the number of cumulative cases of cholera at 98,522 and the number of deaths at 4,282