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Cholera
aid to Zimbabwe is enriching Mugabe regime
Lance
Guma, SW Radio Africa
January 12, 2009
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17725&Itemid=7
Water purification tablets,
re-hydration therapy kits and mosquito nets, donated by United Nations
aid agencies and others to help Zimbabwe's humanitarian and health
crisis, are winding up on the black market and being sold to desperate
people. Since the cholera outbreak last year which has now claimed
nearly 2000 lives the United Nations Children and Education Fund
(UNICEF) has been trucking in 470 000 litres of water daily, drilling
boreholes and distributing water purification tablets. But speak
to many people in the townships and they will tell you they are
buying most of these materials, especially water purification tablets,
on the black market. How the aid materials are winding up on the
black market is anybody's guess.
Newsreel spoke to a family
in the gold mining town of Kadoma who confirmed buying two sets
of mosquito nets, bearing the World Health Organization tag. One
mosquito net is fetching R100 on the black market. Aid agencies
are also giving water purification tablets to clinics, who in turn
are meant to be distributing these tablets to residents for free.
But residents are being told there are no tablets in stock when
they visit their local clinics. Newsreel has been told the black
market is awash with the tablets, as corrupt officials rake in huge
windfalls by siphoning them off from the official distribution channel.
Several shops in Harare are also stocking these tablets.
Only last year several
nurses were arrested at a clinic in Kadoma after charging for cholera
treatment. They were charging R100 for adults and R50 for children.
A woman who sought treatment last month died after failing to raise
the required foreign currency. Well wishers managed to keep her
two children alive after raising R100 to treat them. City health
officials in Harare are also said to be charging US$40 for cholera
disinfectant sprays, which are supposed to be free, according to
our correspondent Simon Muchemwa.
The death toll from cholera
in Zimbabwe continues to rise as the rainy season worsens the spread
of the disease. Despite all the best efforts of the international
community and other aid agencies, the break down in the sewage system
and the inability of government to supply clean water to residents
has ensured the disease remains unstoppable. Even South Africa has
not been spared, with 77 new cases of suspected cholera being reported
this week. Limpopo Water Affairs chief director Alson Matukane admitted
that parts of the Tubatse River in the Steelpoort area were contaminated
with the disease. Just this weekend 64 new cases were reported in
Limpopo and Gauteng while 13 cases were reported in the Western
Cape, Kwazulu-Natal and North West.
Meanwhile United States
based Physicians for Human Rights have called for Mugabe to be charged
under what it described as 'criminal neglect' which has caused the
deadly cholera outbreak. They argue that the ZANU PF leader is culpable
for the collapse of the health and sanitation services in the country.
The group has compiled a report which will be released on Tuesday..
Group Chief Executive Frank Donaghue said; 'Mugabe spends money
on the military and intelligence services that keep him in power,
instead of on the medical and sanitation services essential to the
health of the population.'
Donaghue who was part
of a team that visited Zimbabwe at the end of December last year
said 'cholera is not just a disease, it's a crime.'
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