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Malnutrition claims more lives in Zimbabwe city
ZimOnline
August 10, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=12646

BULAWAYO - Another 26 people died in Zimbabwe's second largest city of Bulawayo in the month of April because of malnutrition-related illnesses.

The latest deaths bring to 136 people the total number of people who have died since the beginning of the year because of malnutrition-related diseases in the city of more than one million people that is tucked at the heart of the arid and hunger-prone Matabeleland region.

The Bulawayo city health officials told a council meeting last week that of those who had succumbed to hunger-related illnesses, most were children below the age of five.

But council was divided on the death statistics with councilors belonging to President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party disputing the figures, saying malnutrition was not that prevalent in Bulawayo and could not have caused so many deaths.

"The figures mentioned are highly unlikely particularly in the light of a bountiful season and good harvests throughout the country, there are no cases of malnutrition in my ward and probably in other wards," said Stars Mathe, a ZANU PF member.

Bulawayo, the only city that publishes figures of malnutrition-related deaths, is controlled by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.

Mugabe's government, which has threatened to use powers granted it by the Urban Councils Act to fire the opposition-led council over hunger-related deaths statistics, accuses Bulawayo Executive Mayor Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube of inflating the figures in order to embarrass the government.

Ndabeni-Ncube denies misrepresenting the hunger-induced mortality statistics, saying all the figures published by his council were obtained from the government's Births and Deaths Registry Department.

"Most people can hardly afford a balanced diet and as a result malnutrition is inevitable under the present harsh conditions," MDC councilor Charles Mpofu told last week's council meeting.

Zimbabwe's food crisis has been compounded by a severe economic recession gripping the southern African country for the past six years.

The recession has seen annual inflation shooting to 993.6 percent, the highest in the world outside a war zone and also spawned shortages of fuel, electricity, essential medicines, hard cash and just about every basic survival commodity.

The MDC and Western governments blame Zimbabwe's crisis on repression and wrong policies by Mugabe such as his seizure of productive farms from whites for redistribution to landless blacks.

The farm seizures destabilised the mainstay agricultural sector and caused severe food shortages after the government failed to give black villagers resettled on former white farms skills training and inputs support to maintain production.

But Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since the country's 1980 independence from Britain, denies mismanaging the country and says its problems are because of economic sabotage by Western governments opposed to his seizure of white land. - ZimOnline

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