Harare — Zimbabwean authorities recently declared the end of a cholera outbreak which lasted nearly 18 months, but public health experts say the conditions which caused the waterborne disease still exist and need urgent attention. After battling a cholera outbreak which began in February of last year, Zimbabwe gave the ‘all clear’ after saying no new cases were recorded in July. The last reported case was in June.
During the outbreak, the country recorded 34,549 suspected cases and more than 700 deaths. Dr. Douglas Mombeshora is Zimbabwe’s health minister.
“What it means really is to say the interventions that we undertook as government have yielded [the] results that we wanted, that is to make sure that we suppress cholera. There are other issues that we have to continue working on. Because the bug is still in the community,” he said.
Itai Rusike, the executive director of Community Working Group on Health in Zimbabwe, said while his organization welcomed the news of a cholera-free country, more work needs to be done. “We had major concerns about the illness and the unnecessary loss of lives from avoidable and preventable deaths. .
.. As a country that experienced the devastation of the 2008-2009 cholera outbreak, we seem not to have derived learning from that and subsequent ones.
The cholera outbreaks of 2008-2009 were a marker of the need for investment in water and sanitation infrastructure,” said Rusike. The government and World Health Organization say Zim.