"There is no cholera" in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe had a severe cholera outbreak from mid-2008 until about April of this year. It spread to almost every part of the country. Over 100,000 were infected, and over 4,000 died.

I met two nurses who worked in an enormous cholera treatment center near Harare called Kudoma. It was just a tent on a soccer field, with special cholera beds: two slabs of board with space between them. At one time, it had over 500 patients.

One nurse described seeing hundreds of people at that huge camp lying on their backs in the cholera beds as diarrhea seeped from them “as if it was coming from a tap.” The nurse said that if a person could last an hour at the treatment center with IV without dying, he or she would usually survive.

One of the nurses said he could recall straddling a dead patient on the ground in order to reach over him to tend to another patient. He said that people died so fast -- and the morgues in Zimbabwe functioned so poorly, if at all -- that there was a small room reserved for dead bodies at Budiriro, a treatment center where he worked. As people died, they were moved into the room. Eventually, the room filled up. Both nurses remember bodies piled shoulder-high in the room. They also remember when the bodies were moved to a bigger room. That one too eventually filled with corpses.

How did President Robert Mugabe respond to the crisis? In December 2008, he said on national television: “There is no cholera in the country.” Instead of acknowledging the situation, news outlets would say that there was no cholera -- just a few cases of diarrhea. Or just a few deaths, cause unknown. It’s reminiscent of the government’s habit of referring to deaths as being caused by a “short illness” (such as murder) or a “long illness” (such as HIV).

Cholera is treatable and preventable. One of the main causes of Zimbabwe’s outbreak is poor waste disposal. News reports out of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-biggest city, describe sewage pipes “bursting." Harare itself has a serious waste-disposal problem, and its municipal water has not functioned for years in many places.

The United Nations warns that Zimbabwe is likely to experience another deadly outbreak when the rainy season begins this October. Some believe it will be worse than last year. The Zimbabwean government could have spent the past several months rebuilding damaged infrastructure and taking serious steps to avoid further loss of life.

But all I read in the (pro-government) newspapers is that Zimbabwe’s sewage problems are worse than ever. Plus, of course, news and evidence that members of government spend funds lavishly on themselves. This past week: The governor of Harare used government funds to buy a new $152,000 vehicle. Every week it’s something new. And, of course, there’s Mr. Mugabe’s Mercedes-laden 22-vehicle motorcade.

And all I have seen with my own eyes are poor communities with wells dangerously near outhouses. A friend of mine asked a resident of one of the poor communities why he and his family would drink from a well in their village when they know it might have cholera. “If we drink from the well, we might get cholera. But if we do not, we will definitely die of thirst.”