AnalysisZimbabwe hit with cholera epidemic

Zimbabwe is in a free fall. The poor country, brutalized by the corrupt and murderous regime of the sclerotic Robert Mugabe, is on the verge of collapse. Two indications:

• Unemployment: According to IndexMundi, the rate of unemployment in Zimbabwe has reached 80 percent;
• Inflation: Zimbabwe’s inflation rate soared in late summer and, in August 2008, stood at 11.2 million percent (11,200,000 percent), the highest in the world, according to the country’s Central Statistical Office. Official figures released in August showed inflation has surged from the rate of 2.2 million percent recorded in May, despite the government’s price controls (the Mugabe government, in early fall, stopped releasing inflation figures, declaring that such figures were a matter of national security). In February 2008, the price of a loaf of bread in the country was less than 200,000 Zimbabwe dollars. In early August, that same loaf of bread cost 1.6 trillion Zimbabwe dollars. CNN reported that analysts have said the Zimbabwean government’s official inflation rate figures are conservative. One of Zimbabwe’s leading banks, Kingdom Bank, said the country’s inflation rate was now more than 20 million percent.

Now, a new, ominous dimension has been added to the misery of Zimbabwe. Alertnet reports that up to 60,000 people in Zimbabwe could be infected with cholera in the worst case if the epidemic spirals further out of control, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The known number people with cholera in Zimbabwe stands at 13,960 with 589 deaths, although the true extent of the outbreak which began in August is unclear, according to the UN agency. “The health-cluster assessment in a worst-case scenario is 60,000 cases,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing in Geneva.

The Telegraph reports that the cholera outbreak is the worst recorded in Zimbabwe. What makes the situation worse is that many patients are unable to reach health centers — and if they do, they find these clinics and hospitals unable to provide simple life-saving medicines, WHO said. The policies of the Mugabe government now make it impossible for health centers to buy and stock even the most rudimentary medications.

Cholera, a highly contagious disease is both preventable and treatable under normal circumstances, but Zimbabwe’s health sector has collapsed as a result of the country’s economic crisis. Because of the absence of a health care system in the country, the death rate from the epidemic has reached 50 percent is some area, according to WHO. “It is total chaos, three hospitals in Harare are closed due to a lack of personnel,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). She also said security had become more tense and there had been reports of looting by crowds and of attacks on aid workers.

Earlier in the decade, in an effort to divert attention from the country’s mounting problems, Mugabe ordered the seizure of some 4,000 farms owned and operated by white farmers. These farms were given to his cronies, with the result being the collapse of food production in the country which, two decades ago, was the breadbasket of southern Africa. The UN World Food Program says that some 5.7 million people — almost half the population — will  need food aid from international aid agencies by early 2009. “Eighty percent of the population does not have access to safe water as a result of major shortages of water treatment chemicals…,” UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said.

UNICEF has drawn up a four-month emergency plan requiring $17.5 million to combat the crisis over the four next months in the water and sanitation, health, and education sectors. (For more information on humanitarian crises and issues visit www.alertnet.org) (Editing by Jonathan Lynn)