ActionAid Working to Combat Zimbabwe's Cholera Outbreak
Thousands in Zimbabwe need your support as ActionAid delivers aid to combat the cholera crisis.
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Thousands in Zimbabwe need your support as ActionAid delivers much needed aid in the face of violence and cholera.
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Cases of cholera are skyrocketing in Africa’s southern regions and Zimbabweans are finding themselves at the center of the outbreak. To date, the number of suspected cases exceeds 35,000, with over 1,700 deaths. The rash of cholera cases is further compounded by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, which has left an estimated 5.5 million people in need of food assistance.
ActionAid is on the ground helping Zimbabweans deal with the recent outbreak by providing relief items, holding planning meetings with partner organizations to find solutions and more. With assistance, ActionAid has reached 18,675 people. However, thousands more are in need of a helping hand.
Here are first-hand accounts from two women in Zimbabwe detailing how the outbreak has impacted their lives.
Stella January and Lizziness Chitandare in an anti-cholera drama performed by Zvido Zvevanhu Arts Ensemble in the Harare suburb of Warren Park.
Margaret Kanaventi
Mabvuku, Zimbabwe
Margaret Kanaventi is 56, a good age in Zimbabwe where life expectancy is below 40 years. She is a volunteer health activist with one of ActionAid’s partner organizations in the poor suburbs of the capital Harare.
“We go door to door in groups, teaching about HIV and AIDS,” Margaret explains. But when the rainy season began in December 2008, the volunteers had to warn people about a new menace: Ccera.
Margaret knew of two cases in Mabvuku, a woman who went to hospital and was cured, and a man who went to the local polyclinic but ignored advice to go to a hospital where cholera treatment was available.
On Monday the man was weak from vomiting and diarrhea. “He was taken to the mortuary on Tuesday,” Margaret says. “I don’t know why he refused to go to hospital.”
The volunteers teach the township’s people to drink safe water and not defecate in the bush. They distribute water purifying tablets provided by ActionAid.
But it’s difficult when toilets are blocked and most of the local wells are out of action. There is one borehole still working 24 hours each day, Margaret says. “We are safe using that borehole. But shallow wells near the sewage are where those two people were infected.”
Margaret does her unpaid health work although, or perhaps because, her own family has been devastated by illness.
“In our family, we were 11: six brothers and five sisters. Five have died. There are six left. My father and mother are dead, so I am the one who is looking after the others – and I am not working.”
Her younger sister Catherine died of TB in 2004. Catherine refused to take an HIV test. But Margaret has little doubt. “I saw she was infected, because I have got the experience.”
Her brother Cosmas died in November of Meningitis, leaving a 12-year-old son.
One of Margaret’s three grown-up children still lives at home. She also cares for Catherine’s 23-year-old son Jonathan, who has epilepsy. Margaret says he needs carbamazepine and phenobarbitone -- two of the standard drugs for treating epilepsy. “It is very difficult for me to get some tablets.”
When Margaret’s husband Julius died of AIDS in 2000, she was worried that she might be HIV positive.
“I go every year to be tested,” she says. “I always go for the checks. But I am negative.”
Stella JaGibson Sarari, leader of Zvido Zvevanhu Arts Ensemble, hands out cholera leaflets after the performance.
Forget Gutuza
Mabvuku, Zimbabwe
Sickness and poverty are destroying families in the Harare township of Mabvuku.
Wearing the pale blue uniform of a health volunteer, 42-year-old Forget Gutuza makes home visits to families affected by HIV and AIDS. Now there is cholera too.
She is embarrassed when she cannot offer people basic medical supplies. Even when she can help with a health problem, she has no cure for poverty.
“When I see a patient, in hunger, with no medication, it is very difficult for me to visit again,” she says.
But people still come to her door at all hours, day or night, for advice. She may be short of disposable gloves for diarrhea cases, but she is evidently a superb counselor.
She is married, with six children. But many local families, she says, consist of “a granny, an orphan and a sick person.” Sometimes the grandmother ends up chasing the sick person out of the house.
It is hard for Forget to go back to a house where something like that has happened. Yet she does.
She explains how difficult it is to deal with sickness in conditions of poverty. She encourages people to improvise.
“When I visit a person who is having diarrhea, I advise them to use plastics (bags) as gloves for handling soiled things. I advise them to use plastic as a bed sheet. We don’t have disinfectant to use on soiled materials.”
She takes the same approach to nutrition. “I recommend traditional foods, wild foods, food they can afford.”
What she needs is “bathing soap, Jik (bleach), gloves, Vaseline, laundry soap, buckets, small blankets, even some sheets; scissors or razor blades.”
Some of these items have been distributed by ActionAid and other agencies, but the need clearly far exceeds the supply.
Meanwhile, Forget goes on handing out her good advice.
“It is a 24-hour job. People come at any hour and say: please may I speak to you, I have a problem.”
