South Africa : Zimbabwe cholera death toll soars to 774

Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's devastating cholera outbreak has now killed nearly 800 people and affected more than 15 000 others, according to the United Nations' World Health Organisation (WHO).

A total of 774 people have died of the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe and suspected cases have climbed to 15 219, said WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib on Wednesday, adding that the numbers were changing everyday.

On Tuesday, the WHO said up to 60 000 people could be infected with cholera in the worst-case scenario envisaged by its experts and other medical personnel in Zimbabwe. It then gave the number of cases suspected as 13 960.

The outbreak, which the WHO last week said would not be easy to contain because of the country's broken down health infrastructure, is the worst recorded in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe's health sector has collapsed because of the country's economic crisis leaving very few places in the country where people infected with cholera could seek medical attention, and the clinics that are open have far too few health workers to contain the outbreak.

An intestinal infection that spreads through contaminated food or water, cholera causes vomiting and acute diarrhoea, and can rapidly lead to death from dehydration.

The disease spreads fastest in situations with poor sanitation such as those found in Zimbabwe's cities where sewers have broken down while garbage piles up in the streets and a shortage of clean water means residents have to rely on unprotected shallow wells for water.

But President Robert Mugabe's government insists "the cholera situation is under control".

"We have enough chemicals to purify the water. We have got enough foreign currency to buy pipes to mend sanitation lines," Zimbabwe's Information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said on Tuesday.

The disease has since spilt into Zimbabwe's neighbours - South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana.

On Tuesday, South Africa's Health Minister Barbara Hogan lead a high-level team of senior officials to assess the cholera outbreak in Mussina, which has claimed close to eight lives in certain parts of Limpopo.

The visit was aimed at finding ways to contain the spread of cholera in Limpopo and other parts of the country.

The lives, which have been claimed by cholera, are largely confined to certain parts of Limpopo much closer to Zimbabwe like Mussina and Madimbo, which have seen an increasing number of patients crossing the border from Zimbabwe.

Since the outbreak, Western leaders - US President George Bush, British Premier Gordon Brown and France's Nicolas Sarkozy have called for the 84-year-old President Mugabe to step down.

But the AU has said it did not support calls for tougher action on Zimbabwe, adding that sending peacekeeping troops or removing the increasingly authoritarian Mr Mugabe by force, were not options.

Once a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe is in the grip of severe economic crisis and food shortages that Mr Mugabe blames on poor weather and Western sanctions which he says have hampered the importation of fertilisers, seed, and other farming inputs.

Critics blame Zimbabwe's troubles on repression and wrong polices by Mr Mugabe such as his land reforms that displaced established commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded farmers leading to a massive drop in farm production.

Zimbabweans had hoped a unity government between Mr Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would help ease the political situation and allow the country to focus on tackling the economic crisis and food shortages.

But the two political foes, who signed an agreement to share power about three months, have failed to form a unity government because they cannot agree on how to share control of key cabinet posts and other top government positions. - BuaNews-NNN