Zimbabwe ill affords laxity on cholera

CHOLERA is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.

According to the World Health Organisation: "Cholera is a disease of poverty, affecting people with inadequate access to safe water and basic sanitation. Conflict, unplanned urbanisation and climate change increase the risk of cholera."

While the global health body also tells us that this disease in now endemic (widespread) in many countries and remains a "global threat to public health and an indicator of inequity and lack of social development", for Zimbabwe the disease should cause us to lose sleep given our agreed mission to achieve upper-middle-income status by 2030, which is just seven years away.

In an upper-middle-income society, such diseases as cholera are an abomination, an anathema.

The country's 2030 target, in fact, dovetails with a global strategy on cholera control which was launched in 2017 under the banner: Ending cholera: A global roadmap to 2030, which aims to reduce cholera deaths by 90% in the next seven years.

So it is from this background that we voice our concern that the nation appears to be sleeping on the wheel as far as completely eradicating the cholera scourge, given that the country's cholera numbers keep surging.

Our laxity in the fight against the age-old disease is starkly being exposed by latest cholera figures which show that suspected and confirmed cases have now been reported in 56 of the country's 64 districts. This means that from a single case which was recorded in February last year in Chegutu, Mashonaland West province, we have allowed the disease to propagate across the country, which should extremely worry us all because we never imagined that we would revisit the dreaded 2008-2009 cholera pandemic scenes when more than 4 000 people succumbed to the disease and nearly 100 000 others were affected.

From that single case in February last year, we have now recorded a cumulative total of 14 885 suspected cholera cases, 67 laboratory confirmed deaths, 266 suspected cholera deaths and 1 676 laboratory confirmed cases as of January 2 this year.

This is quite disconcerting given that cholera numbers are surging because we are failing to provide ourselves with safe water and basic sanitation, which are the key basic building blocks to achieving our goal of an upper-middle-income society by 2030.

We cannot hope to achieve this goal if we are failing on the basics and the buck stops with not only those with the wherewithal to provide us with the water and access to sanitation such as the government and its local authorities, but with all of us.

We should all play our part. But events over the just ended festive season indicated that we were not even bothered that a deathly disease which can kill in a matter of hours is stalking us like the dreaded midnight reaper. Surely, we cannot afford to be this lax to the point of not caring about our health in critical times as these. It is pathetic that many of us are failing to do the simplest of tasks such as properly washing their hands and making sure that the water they drink and food they eat is safe.

We cannot afford to throw caution to the wind at this most critical moment.