Health clinics overwhelmed by cholera cases in Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, a cholera epidemic is claiming hundreds of lives.  The medical system has totally broken down.  Western aid agencies have arrived in force after the Mugabe regime reluctantly appealed for international help last week. They are flying in medics, medicines and equipment.

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The room suddenly fell silent. The local health official momentarily stopped his briefing of aid workers visiting the cholera treatment centre in Chitungwiza, a township 20 miles from Harare.

Right outside the open window four labourers in latex gloves were loading a rigid corpse, trussed up in black plastic sheeting, on to a pick-up truck that had come to take it away for burial.

It was a sight that reinforced the message of the official dramatically. Here in Chitungwiza, as in many other communities across Zimbabwe, the cholera epidemic is overwhelming the skeletal remains of social services.

The corpses of two other victims lay wrapped in blankets in the makeshift mortuary of the centre, which is in the former maternity unit of the clinic. Their deaths raised the total in this wretched, densely populated township to more than 80.

By Martin Fletcher
The Times (UK)

 
A baby drinks water from her mother’s hand in Harare, Zimbabwe Monday, Dec. 8, 2008. European Union nations moved to tighten sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government on Monday and stood united in calling for the country’s authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe to ‘step down.’ The move was to protest the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, where a cholera outbreak is claiming thousands of live due to poor state of health care there. .(AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

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