Background
More than 300,000 people are in grave danger from a cholera epidemic that is now sweeping Zimbabwe, where hyperinflation, food shortages, and massive unemployment have left families hungry, weak, and highly vulnerable to infection.
Between August and November of 2008, 12,546 cholera cases and 565 deaths were recorded across the country.
Oxfam has now established the Zimbabwe Crisis Fund to expand its response to the emergency, which it began to tackle in October by rehabilitating wells to provide clean water and by distributing soap and disinfectant.
"People have been going without food for months," said Peter Mutoredzanwa, Oxfam's country director in Zimbabwe. "With unemployment over 80 percent and food unavailable across the country, they now have to contend with cholera and other diseases as the water and sanitation systems break down."
Cholera, which can cause acute diarrhea and death if medical attention is not urgently provided, is contracted by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacterium. The illness can spread fast through communities where sewage and drinking water aren't properly treated. During severe outbreaks, the source of the contamination is often the feces of people who have already been infected.
In Zimbabwe, the disease has surged as a result of the decay of municipal sewage treatment systems, poor maintenance of water supplies, and a lack of the most basic tools for good hygiene, such as soap. "With the rainy season upon us, the epidemic will spread even more rapidly," warned Mutoredzanwa. "With close to half the population weakened by serious food shortages, cholera, when it hits, is even more likely to be lethal."
If symptoms are addressed quickly, cholera can be successfully treated by replacing the fluids and salt patients lose. Oral rehydration solution—a combination of sugar and salt mixed with water—is a key remedy. In severe cases, patients may need to have lost fluid replaced intravenously. But years of underinvestment in public services means that health care provision in Zimbabwe is now close to collapsing. Hospitals are dangerously short of medicines and there is a serious lack of health care workers.
And hunger is looming.
Mutoredzanwa said that there are indications that five million Zimbaweans—nearly half the country's 11.4 million people—will be in urgent need of food by January. The decline of commercial farm production in recent years, the impact of HIV/AIDS, and an inflation rate that is the highest in the world have all contributed to the widespread lack of food and other essential items.
