These are Zimbabweans being treated for cholera since its national outbreak last year which has claimed over 400 Zimbabweans according to Government figures.This is what I mean when I say that the Zimbabwean healthcare system has completely collapsed due to the looting of public funds, and the plunder of that country’s natural resources like Gold and Diamonds.
To start with, any reasonably run country shouldn’t be having its citizens suffering from a medieval disease like cholera, which is caused by swallowing food or water contaminated with the cholera bacteria linked to faeces.Zimbabwe only has 6 central hospitals, all of them were built by the colonial government before Zimbabwe’s independence.The ZANUPF government never built a single central hospital in its 43 years of running the once prosperous Southern African country.
ZANUPF inherited 5 central hospitals and only upgraded a provincial hospital it inherited from the colonial regime into a central hospital in Chitungwiza.Zimbabwe is not poor, it was the second most sophisticated economy in Subsaharan Africa when ZANUPF took over in 1980, now it has the highest inflation in the world, and it is in the top ten global list of the worst governed countries.
It also has the highest interest rate in the world at 130% making it painfully possible for businesses to survive the tide brought by corrupt rule.Put simply, life in Zimbabwe is now extremely difficult and painful for the poor who are in their millions.
The whole country has no single working radiotherapy cancer treatment machine in all its public hospitals, the biggest hospital only has ONE maternity theatre built in 1977, again by the colonial government.
So far Zimbabwe has had 17, 730 cholera cases in this latest outbreak.Zimbabweans don’t have clean drinking running water delivered in their urban homes.
They drill boreholes in wealthy areas, and the United Nations and other donor agencies have drilled communal boreholes in the poor townships where Zimbabweans line up in the morning at communal borehole water taps.This has been caused by years of public fund looting and natural resource plunder by ZANUPF political elites.
According to Zimbabwean Law, the ZANUPF central government should provide water sources like dams and lakes.Sadly, the capital city of Harare, Chitungwiza and surrounding areas rely on Lake Chivero which was built in 1950 by the colonial government to service only 100,000 people.
Today it services over 4 million Zimbabweans due to the failure to build new dams as required by Zimbabwe’s law.This failure to have clean water in homes has triggered many episodes of cholera and typhoid at different intervals resulting in many Zimbabweans dying from cholera and typhoid!It is distressing to see Zimbabweans subjected to such a tragic reality of a corrupt government which has failed to just service the healthcare system it inherited.
The impact this has had on poor citizens is what you see in this picture, citizens being treated under trees with drips hanging on tree branches.
The lack of water infrastructure and resources compounded by mismanagement of the Zimbabwean economy and corruption highlights the urgent need for Zimbabweans to do something for themselves about their well being and future.The tragic irony is that businesses linked to the regime’s elites like Green Fuel collect their millions without even blinking an eye.Chiredzi it the same district that produces millions worth of sugar every year, but when a country is run by a ruthless corrupt cabal, citizens will die from easily treatable diseases triggered by avoidable conditions which only require clean drinking water.
When I report about these things without pictures and videos, some are forgiven for thinking that I am exaggerating, but this is the daily reality of life for Zimbabwe’s poor ordinary citizens.(Source Hopewell Chin’ono)
