CHARLES MANGWIRO, Maputo | Thursday
SOUTH Africa, still smarting from a World Health Organisation (WHO) rebuke over a lack of clear strategy to fight cholera, is to launch a regional effort to stamp out the water-borne disease with Mozambique and Swaziland.
Representatives of the three countries will meet next week in the Mozambican capital Maputo to decide how to halt the spread of cholera, which has killed hundreds and infected tens of thousands of people across southern Africa since last August.
WHO this week criticised South Africa for failing to provide a ”clear operational strategy for water and sanitation for the management of the ongoing epidemic”, and urged South Africa to provide emergency water supplies as part of a wider strategy to stop the spread of cholera, which has killed 67 people since August.
”We need to meet and define the most effective ways to prevent the situation and reduce the number of deaths,” Mozambiques health minister Aida Libombo told reporters.
She said 252 Mozambicans had died from the disease in the seven months to September after floods hit the southern African country last February and March. The epidemic picked up again as rains started in November, and Libombo said 33 people had since died from the disease.
Cholera is a bacterial disease spread through water and unsanitary conditions. It causes diarrhoea so severe that its victims die from the shock of dehydration.
The disease has spread through southern Africa in recent months, with outbreaks reported in South Africa, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, the epidemic, which until December was largely concentrated in the country’s eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, has since spread to other provinces, including the economic heartland of Gauteng.
The KwaZulu-Natal health department said on Wednesday it had recorded 675 new cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of people infected by the disease since August to 21_439.
It has been difficult to curb the disease in the province because of the remoteness of rural communities, a lack of health care facilities and the dependence of villagers on polluted streams as their only source of water. – Reuters