By Kuda Pembere
Amidst the rainy season, Mbare residents are entering their fourth month with burst sewer pipes, triggering fears of another cholera outbreak.
This emerged during a tour of the oldest density suburb in Harare by the Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Honourable Sleiman Kwidini on Wednesday.
Residents who spoke to this publication said they were relieved that the Ministry of Health top officials were in their area to assess the situation.
Gogo Shamhu said they have been in this situation since last year.
“We are grateful for your coming here. This problem has been there since last year. About four months. We don’t know what to do when the sun rises because of this sewer problem. We do not know what to do when in-laws visit us.
“Right now we have young children who are always sick. I have three people who are not feeling well under my care. It could be these water borne diseases,” she said.
Another resident said the Local authority would just dig trenches and leave them unattended for a year.
“It is now close to four months living in such a situation where sewer water is all over. The situation has been made worse now,” said the resident. “The local authority is not bringing us bins and now the water seeps into the drainage. We spent our Christmas in the sewers. We are using buckets to remove some of the sewer water from our premises.”
The Health Ministry Deputy Minister Kwidini said it was important for ministries that are responsible for provision of proper WASH to meet regularly and proffer solutions to end the perennial cholera and other water borne diseases.
“Amidst this cholera situation, we are seeing all the blame being heaped on the Ministry of Health. But we are here to clarify that inasmuch as the Ministry of Health is the overseer of all health issues but this issue of burst sewers is a matter for the City of Harare to handle.
“As the Ministry of Health we are concerned and are committed to seeing people having proper WASH. So we agreed with Harare City, to work together because their failures end up seeing Government being blamed particularly the Ministry of Health. We talked of forming a group of all departments concerned such as Harare City, Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Energy to absolve these issues.
Harare City Health Department Director Dr Prosper Chonzi said diarrhoeal diseases flare up during the rainy season expressing fears that if the WASH challenges are not addressed, Harare could witness another cholera outbreak soon.
“This time of the year especially after Christmas when the rains are upon us, we expect and anticipate there will be a lot of water-borne diseases and top amongst those will be cholera but we do have other diseases such as typhoid and other diarrheal disease that flare up during this time of the year. Unfortunately, the situation in the city right now is so conducive we can have and nurture these. Here I am talking about the WASH situation in the City which leaves a lot to be desired as far as these kind of diseases are concerned. Over the last days of the holidays we were inundated with calls stating they were literally living in raw sewage,” he said.
He added, “Right now we are talking about Mbare but there is Glen View, Budiriro, Kuwadzana, the situation is bad. If at any time the vibrio cholerae bacteria enters such an environment, we end up returning to the 2008 and 2018 era. We really don’t want that. Remember we vaccinated people using the Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV) and the Typhoid conjugate vaccine in Budiriro and Kuwadzana, we did not cover the whole of Mbare. This means means Mbare is at high risk. Still the efficacy of the vaccines is dropping unless we are going back to vaccinate. The mainstay of management of this is not to vaccinate but to deal with WASH issues.”
