Last year, more than 40 people in Harare were hospitalised due to typhoid, which is a bacterial infection which cause headaches, fever, and constipation or diarrhoea.
Harare is the capital, and the most populous city of Zimbabwe. Situated in the north-east of the country in the heart of historic Mashonaland, the city has an estimated population of 1,606,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area
“The conditions on the ground – frequent water cuts and poor sanitation – are conducive to a typhoid outbreak,” the city’s health director, Prosper Chonzi told Thomson Reuters Foundation, and six cases of typhoid had been confirmed in the past few days, with more expected to emerge.
The large sprawling communities are often without water for days on end, and according to Chonzi, as long as there is an inconsistent supply of fresh drinking water and unhygienic sanitation, there will continue to be sporadic cases of such outbreaks of typhoid.
Health officials have been deployed to the various areas that have been affected by the outbreak, including Hopley, a sprawling township where sewers and tap water are just pipe-dreams, to contain the identify suspected cases and contain the situation should it be found that there is a problem in the area.
Around 50 students of the Roosevelt High School were recently hospitalised due to a diarrhoeal disease, shigellosis, which thrives in areas with poor drinking water supplies and bad sanitation.
The situation is just getting worse due to the extended drought that has been hitting the southern African region. Everyone is worried about the situation, and even a nurse at Parirenyatwa, the largest referral hospital, says that she fears for the safety of her own children sue to the worsening water problem.
“I live in the townships, and there we do not have water four days of the week from 4am to 10pm, and no water at all for the other three days. When available, the water is visibly dirty, brownish or greenish in colour, and smells like raw sewage,” she said under guarantee of anonymity while tending to a child suffering from severe diarrhoea.
While authorities deny that there is any supply problem, as is usual, the frequent and prolonged droughts in the area, including the current overly long dry spell due to El Niño, it is obvious that Zimbabwe’s fresh water supplies are in trouble.
Rent water cooler and bottled watercooler in London. Get watercooler and water cooler accessories from Living-Water.
