Re: Cholera Is Raging, despite Denial by Zimbabwe

[Guest guest]

Mr Mugabe is quite insane if he thinks people around the world will buy this one. Byu the way, $1.00US = 164,000 Zimbabwe dollars. I guess this is OK with Mr M.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Eleanor Roosevelt

From: <rumjal@...>Subject: [Flu] Cholera Is Raging, despite Denial by ZimbabweFlu Date: Thursday, December 11, 2008, 10:26 PM

Cholera Is Raging, Despite Denial by Mugabe By CELIA W. DUGGERHARARE, Zimbabwe — Cholera swept through the five youngest children inthe Chigudu family with cruel and bewildering haste.On a recent Saturday, the children had chased one another throughstreets that flow with raw sewage, and chattered happily as theybedded down for the night. The diarrhea and vomiting began aroundmidnight. Relatives frantically prepared solutions of water, sugar andsalt for the youngsters, aged 20 months to 12 years, to drink.But by morning, they were limp and hollow-eyed. The disease wasdraining their bodies of fluid."Then they started to die," said their brother Lovegot, 18. "Priscawas first, second Sammy, then Shantel, Clopas and Aisha, the littlestone, last."A ferocious cholera epidemic, spread by water contaminated with humanexcrement, has stricken more than 16,000 people across Zimbabwe

sinceAugust and killed more than 780. President G. Mugabe saidThursday that the epidemic had ended, but health experts are warningthat the number of cases could surpass 60,000, and that half thecountry's population of 12 million is at risk.The outbreak is yet more evidence that Zimbabwe's most fundamentalpublic services — including water and sanitation, public schools andhospitals — are shutting down, much like the organs of a severelydehydrated cholera victim.Zimbabwe's once promising economy, disastrously mismanaged by Mr.Mugabe's government, has been spiraling downward for almost a decade,but residents here say the free fall has gained frightening velocityin recent weeks. Most of the nation's schools, which were once thepride of Africa, producing a highly literate population, havevirtually ceased to function as teachers, whose salaries no longereven cover the cost of the

bus fare to work, quit showing up.With millions enduring severe and worsening hunger, and choleraspilling into neighboring countries, there are rising internationalcalls for Mr. Mugabe to step down after 28 years in power. But heseems only to be digging in, and his announcement about the epidemic'send came just a day after the World Health Organization warned thatthe outbreak was grave enough to carry "serious regional implications. "Water cutoffs are common and prolonged here, but last week the tapswent dry in virtually all of the capital's densely packed suburbs,where people most need clean drinking water to wash their hands andfood, essential steps to containing cholera. On rutted streets crowdedwith out-of-school children and jobless adults, piles of uncollectedgarbage mounted and thick brown sludge burbled up from burst sewer lines.The capital's two largest hospitals, sprawling

facilities that oncewould have provided sophisticated care in just such a crisis, hadlargely shut down weeks earlier after doctors and nurses, theirsalaries rendered virtually worthless by the nation's cripplinghyperinflation, simply stopped coming to work.Inflation officially hit 231 million percent in July, but on, an independent economist in Zimbabwe, estimates that it hasnow surged to an astounding eight quintillion percent — that is aneight followed by 18 zeros.The situation has deteriorated to such a degree that soldiers — Mr.Mugabe's enduring muscle — rioted last week on the streets of thecapital, breaking windows and looting stores, after waiting days inbank lines without being able to withdraw their meager salaries fromcash-short tellers. A midlevel officer who participated in the mayhem,but spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of prosecution, saidtroops

were enraged that they could no longer afford to buy food orsend their children to school."As we talk, children of chefs are in private schools learning whileours are playing in dusty roads," he said bitterly, using the localterm for the people in power.Rumors about this extraordinary unrest in the army's ranks havecirculated feverishly, with some speculating that the rioting wasstaged to justify imposing a state of emergency. Others hoped itfinally signaled the beginning of the end for Mr. Mugabe.Still, the Mugabe government's ability to clamp down on dissent seemsintact. The police quelled the riot. Sixteen soldiers now face acourt-martial. Beyond that, about 20 opposition party activists andhuman rights workers have recently disappeared. Last week, armed menabducted a well-known human rights activist, Jestina Mukoko, at dawnwhile she was barefoot, still in her nightgown and bereft of

hereyeglasses and as her teenage son looked on helplessly.Political analysts have long predicted that Mr. Mugabe's hold on power— which he has refused to loosen since September, when he signed apower-sharing deal with his nemesis, opposition leader Tsvangirai — would be broken only after the economy completelyimploded and daily life became intolerable.But as the endgame of the octogenarian Mr. Mugabe's rule plays out,the human tragedies mount.In a country with the terrible distinction of having the secondhighest proportion of orphans in the world — one in four children haslost one or both parents — the closing of schools and hospitals ishitting these most vulnerable children mercilessly.Aisha Makombo, 15, has been raising her 11-year-old sister, Khadija,since their mother died of AIDS last year. An expressive girl with asoft, round face, Aisha, who is H.I.V.

negative, has been strugglingto get drug treatment for Khadija, who is now sick with AIDS.She took her little sister, so stunted she appears half her actualage, to Parirenyatwa Hospital, the nation's largest referral hospital,last year, but crucial test results needed to qualify Khadija forlife-saving medications were inexplicably misplaced.On a later visit, Aisha was told the machine that performed the testswas broken. Now the hospital is virtually closed. Aisha said she wasreferred to private doctors who demanded payment in South African randor American dollars, but the girls had no money.Aisha's eyes filled with tears as she explained that she had been ableto obtain only cotrimoxazole, an antibiotic used to treatopportunistic infections, for her little sister.Aisha used to escape the sadness of her life by going to school, buttwo months ago the teachers at her high school stopped

showing up."She didn't bid us farewell, she just left," Aisha said of her mathteacher, the one she misses most of all. "At first, we thought shewould come back, but then we gave up hope."Aisha now scrambles to barter her labor for food, while her littlesister, too weak to work, attends a small school run by a nonprofitgroup. Last week, Aisha started a four-day job, bent over in a field,readying it for planting. In exchange, she was to get two pounds offlour and a bottle of cooking oil, as well as a shirt and blouse forKhadija.The girls pray together each night before going to sleep in the tiny,grubby, windowless room they share. The small house belongs to theirgrandfather, but he admitted it was Aisha who provided the food forhim and her 45-year-old uncle who sometimes steals the cornmeal sheearns, as well as the girls' clothes to sell secondhand.Yet the girls say they cling to

their dreams. Aisha's is to be adoctor, Khadija's a bank teller, each hungering for what the sistersdo not have — health and money for medicine and food.Zimbabwe has one of the world's highest rates of H.I.V. infection, andnow a raging cholera crisis. But with the economic collapse decimatingrevenues needed to run the country's public health systems, mortalityrates among cholera victims here are five times higher than in othercountries, public health experts said.Mr. Mugabe's government — in its pursuit of power and money — has alsocontributed to both catastrophes, analysts say.Earlier this year, the government jeopardized $188 million in aid fromthe Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by taking $7.3million the organization had donated and spending it on other,unrelated expenses. Only at the 11th hour, under threat that the moneywould be withheld, did the

government reimburse the Global Fund forthe missing funds.And two years ago, the government took control of Harare's water andsewer systems from the opposition-controll ed city council, deprivingthe local government of a crucial source of revenue to keep servicesfunctioning."The real motive was to dilute the influence of the oppositionMovement for Democratic Change and cripple them financially, " saidJustice Mavezenge, an officer with the Combined Harare ResidentsAssociation, a civic group.Last week, even Mr. Mugabe's mouthpiece, the newspaper The Herald,castigated the state-run water authority for running out of chemicalsto purify Harare's water supply — chemicals it said could have beentrucked in from South Africa in less than 24 hours.The United Nation's Children's Fund and international donors havestepped into the void. They have begun trucking 50 tankers of freshwater

into the most densely settled suburbs and will be providingwater treatment chemicals for the city over the next four months, saidUnicef's acting country director, Roeland Monasch.But some aid officials fear that the epidemic will be impossible tocontain because of the failing water and sanitation systems in placeslike Budiriro, the Harare suburb where the Chigudu children died andwhere half the country's cases have occurred."We're not going to be able to control it," said one aid agencyadviser, speaking anonymously for fear of retribution. "The likelyscenario is that people who get sick in places like Budiriro will gohome for the festive season and you'll get flash points all over therural areas."Cholera stole the five Chigudu children in just two days, on Nov. 17and 18, and the grandmother and aunt who helped care for them diedjust days later. Their father, who returned home just hours

after thelast of his children died, got his first inkling of unspeakablecalamity when his youngest ones weren't there to clamber all over himas he walked in the door."I will never get my children back," he said.The death toll mounts each day. Chipo and Tecla Murape rushed theirorphaned 5-year-old niece, Moisha, to the clinic in Chitungwiza, acity just south of Harare, last week. Nurses told the family the veinsin the girl's arms had collapsed because she had lost so much fluid.No doctor ever saw her, her relatives said, and the nurses never hit avein. Moisha, a shy, but friendly girl, instead drank rehydration fluids.Throughout the day, she complained of a terrible thirst and astomachache. On the advice of clinic workers, her aunts did not evenhold her hand as she lay dying, fearing infection. After night fell,the nurses said there was nothing more they could do and suggestedthat

Moisha's relatives take her to the city's hospital, some two anda half miles away.But there was no ambulance. Tecla Murape, 42, swaddled Moisha to herback and set off hurriedly for the hourlong walk, her heart poundingwith worry. Under a dark, moonless sky, she took a shortcut through amaize field, leaping across yet another putrid sewage spill. By thetime they arrived, Mrs. Murape's clothes were soaked with Moisha'swatery diarrhea. Hours later, Moisha died.http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 12/12/world/ africa/12cholera .html