Ravaged by economic collapse, a failing public health-care system and a dysfunctional government, the last thing Zimbabwe needed was a disease capable of exploiting all of its glaring faults. But that is precisely what the cholera outbreak was able to do. Lead by gross incompetence on the part of President Robert Mugabe’s administration, a combination of factors allowed the cholera epidemic to mushroom into a catastrophe that eventually infected 100,000 people and claimed over 4,200 lives.
Though strict censorship is practiced by the Zimbabwean government, I was able to spend time documenting the devastating nature of the cholera epidemic and Medicins sans Frontiers’ (MSF) efforts to respond and deal with the outbreak. At the time, in the capital Harare many of the large hospitals closed while doctors and nurses went on strike over pitifully low salaries and lack of medicines. With so many hospitals closing their doors, patients were forced to seek treatment at poorly staffed local government clinics supported by a limited number of MSF staff. Those that fell ill literally were finding their way to these clinics any way they could…hitching rides, walking long distances and in some cases being carried to the clinics in wheelbarrows.
At the same time, the country’s water and sanitation systems were barely functioning. In towns like Chitungwiza and Budiriro—both hit hard by the cholera outbreak—garbage piled up along roadsides while raw sewage spewed from broken pipes and meandered down residential streets past children’s play areas. Throughout the epidemic Mugabe’s government failed to take any initiative in launching a preventative campaign, simply blaming the entire fiasco on the British. But despite limited resources and general uncooperativeness from the government, MSF played a key role in bringing the cholera outbreak under control.
