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Health Crisis - Focus on Cholera and Anthrax - Index of articles
Two
dead in Harare cholera outbreak
Earth
Times
September 04, 2008
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/229724,two-dead-in-harare-cholera-outbreak.html
Two people have died and 23 are in hospital following an outbreak
of cholera, the highly contagious diarrhoeal disease, in one of
Harare's crowded townships, health officials said Thursday. The
outbreak occurred on Monday in Chitungwiza, a dormitory township
of about a million people on Harare's southern outskirts where sewerage
routinely flows through the streets and people's yards.
Chitungwiza hospital
chief executive Obadiah Moyo said the institution had dealt with
a total of 34 people with the disease, but said that "we have
enough medication for all the cholera victims."
"Residents of this
area have been getting their water from unprotected wells because
there is no proper water supply system," said Chitungwiza town
clerk Godfrey Tanyanyiwa. "We suspect these wells could have
been contaminated by burst sewer pipes."
Residential areas nearly
all over the Zimbabwean capital often suffer broken sewerage pipes
and open streams of raw sewerage are visible in all poor townships.
Zimbabwe has suffered
several cholera outbreaks in recent years following the collapse
of infrastructure due to the country's political and economic crisis.
"I can't believe
we don't have a full-scale epidemic," said a doctor who asked
not to be named. "The sanitary conditions in the cities are
appalling. It's a health timebomb."
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