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Harare, a 'health time bomb': experts
Caiphas Chimhete,The Standard (Zimbabwe)
April 17, 2005

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/read.php?st_id=2179

MOST of Harare's high-density suburbs are sitting on a health time bomb because of overcrowding, health experts have warned. They are convinced the overcrowding has strained excessively the old and crumbling ablution facilities installed during the colonial era.

Diseases such as scabies, Tuberculosis (TB), diarrhoea, measles and dysentery, some of which were last reported before independence, have resurfaced due to overcrowding and the general shortage of drugs. The magnitude of the problem is alarming, they said.

The threat of disease is further compounded by the critical water shortage currently being experienced in the capital city.

The problem is most profound in the high-density areas of Mbare, Highfield, Kambuzuma, Epworth, Tafara, Mufakose and Dzivarasekwa, where Harare's poorest inhabitants reside.

It is estimated that Harare has more than 2,5 million people and nearly half a million are in desperate need of accommodation.

Presently, an average of 15 people stay at every house, built on stands measuring 200m, in Harare's high-density suburbs. Such houses were built to accommodate a maximum of six people only.

The executive director of Community Working Group on Health (CWGH), Itai Rusike, said overcrowding in Harare's high-density suburbs has reached crisis levels, creating potentially "explosive disease epidemic situations".

He said diseases such as scabies, which were last reported during the colonial era, were beginning to emerge 25 years after independence, and that this was an indication of the collapse of the health sector.

"It is a time bomb, a huge problem indeed. Late last year, we had an outbreak of scabies in Kambuzuma, a disease which we last heard about during Smith's regime" said Rusike.

He said after 25 years of independence, communicable diseases such as scabies, Tuberculosis (TB), diarrhoea, measles and dysentery were rampant in areas such as Mbare, Epworth, Mufakose and Dzivarasekwa, where people live in crowded single rooms.

Director of the Harare-based Institute of Water and Sanitation Development (IWSD), Engineer Ngoni Mudege, said houses designed to accommodate a family of six were taking up to 15 people, a condition which he said was a rececipe for the spread of communicable diseases.

Mudege said due to overcrowding sanitation systems were failing to cope, resulting in waste piling up in the pipes.

"The sewer is designed to service a specific number of people and this is one the case now. In books, we have the best town planning system in the region but we fail in the application of our by-laws," Mudege said.

He said the situation in most high-density areas had gotten out of hand, especially in flats such as Nenyere and Matapi in Mbare.

IWSD says toilets in Mbare are overcrowded and most of them do not flush and up to 1 300 people share one communal toilet with only six squatting holes. In addition to poor latrines the urban poor also face solid waste and drainage problems.

"If you are crowded you lose ventilation, which leads to the spread of opportunistic infections such as TB.

At the moment, the potential of a Cholera outbreak is very high because of overcrowding," Mudege said.

Harare City Council said inadequate housing was one of the biggest social problems facing the city, which has suffered heavily from political interference from central government.

In its 2003 annual report, which is the latest, the department said the shortage of accommodation in Harare had led to the mushrooming of shacks, which are a health hazard to the inhabitants.

"Proliferation of backyard shanties for human habitation constructed of various assorted materials resulting in overcrowding conditions under unhygienic conditions and the straining of municipal services remain the city's perennial social problem," said Harare City Health Director, Dr Lovemore Mbengeranwa, in a forward to the report.

The report said conditions at Dzivarasekwa and Hatcliffe squatter settlements had deteriorated to "deplorable levels" creating potentially explosive disease epidemic situations.

"Pulmonary tuberculosis remained the major communicable disease notified, accounting for 5 536 cases (51.6 percent) out of the 10 729 cases investigated," says the report.

Similar problems are also prevalent at Porta Farm, some 30 kilometres west of Harare, where squatters from the capital were dumped in preparation of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1991.

Harare City Council spokesperson, Leslie Gwindi, said the council was working with the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, in trying to solve the housing crisis in the city.

"We are the implementers of government policy and we are working with central government to Provide accommodation to solve the problem," said Gwindi.

But Rusike blamed the government for failing to provide decent accommodation to people. The government, which is aware of the impending catastrophe, has not taken any action to avert a crisis, he said.

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