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Water shortages spur sharp rise in diarrhea, dysentery in Zimbabwe
Associated Press
August 20, 2007

http://www.pr-inside.com/water-shortages-spur-sharp-rise-in-r202589.htm

HARARE, Zimbabwe: Cases of diarrhea and dysentery have soared to 900 a day in the Zimbabwean capital with health authorities blaming water shortages, according to a report Monday in the official newspaper.

City health director Dr. Prosper Chonzi said each of Harare's 60 public clinics were treating an average of 15 water-related complaints a day, with private doctors dealing with many more, the Herald newspaper said. No deaths were reported.

State radio said taps ran dry in impoverished townships around Harare for up to three days at a time, forcing householders to search for water in drains and wells contaminated by collapsing sewerage facilities.

The northern Hatcliffe district, where basic houses were built after a widely criticized slum clearance operation in 2005, rarely had running water, according to city health authorities.

Chonzi said two years ago that diarrhea cases were uncommon in the city of 1.5 million people.

Such cases have also increased in the second city of Bulawayo and other centers, officials say, but no comparative tallies have been made available. Environment and Tourism Minister Francis Nhema said Harare residents were storing water for long periods, risking the build up of bacteria, and underground water had become unsafe to drink, the Herald reported.

"People now realize that we messed up our environment ... we have killed the water table flows with our actions," Nhema told the newspaper.

The newspaper itself is increasingly difficult to find because of the economic crisis gripping the country.

Daily water and power outages have affected industrial districts, further curbing production of already scarce goods after the government June 26 ordered the prices on all goods and services to be cut by about half to try to tame rampant inflation. Acute shortages of gasoline have crippled transportation and delivery services.

Official inflation is given as 4,500 percent, the highest in the world, but independent estimates put it closer to 20,000 percent.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast inflation reaching about 100,000 percent by the end of the year.

Stores across the nation remain empty of cornmeal, bread, meat and other staples as producers say they cannot afford to sell their products below the cost of production and distribution.

The shortages of basic goods have spawned the emergence of "professional queuers" - generally the unemployed who stand in line to await deliveries, buy goods at the reduced prices enforced by police and price inspectors and then sell them at a profit.

On the street in the well-to-do Harare suburb of Newlands on Monday, children were offering bread for nearly double the fixed price of 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars (15 U.S. cents, 11 euro cents at the dominant illegal black market currency exchange rate, or US$2 (Euro 1.45) at the official rate.)

The main Newlands "TM" supermarket had little food or essential goods to sell Monday. Fruit and vegetable racks were almost bare. Soap, washing powder, cigarettes, newspapers and magazines, and beer disappeared last week.

Staff at a small cafe said they received ten copies of The Herald on Monday out of a long-standing daily order of 60. The newspaper, suffering shortages of newsprint and materials, was again not delivered to its subscribers in the residential neighborhood.

The independent press is banned in Zimbabwe so most people rely on radio or the Herald for news. But the paper has been forced to slash both its print run and the number of pages it publishes.

The "TM" supermarket, named after the initials of Thomas Meikle, founder of a main nationwide 60-store supermarket brand, has been dubbed by locals as "MT" - for empty.

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