22 November 2008
CATHERINE Mutodzaniswa (54), is still traumatised a fortnight after she survived a severe cholera attack.
This is because Julia Chapeyama (44), who was her very close friend of 10 years and confidante who nursed her back to good health, was not so lucky.
Chapeyama fell ill on Saturday last week and succumbed to cholera the next morning. At her funeral wake, Mutodzaniswa was beside herself with grief tainted with guilt. She told The Standard she would never get over the loss of her close friend.
"If only God had taken me," she said. "I was the one who was sick and she nursed me back to health and then all of sudden she was ill. A few hours later she was dead. I am deeply pained. We were friends for a very long time. What will I do without her?" Mutodzaniswa said as she broke down, unable to control herself. Mutodzaniswa of Glen View 3 suburb was detained for a day at Budiriro Polyclinic, a designated cholera site that deals with the high cases of the disease in the area and nearby townships. Unlike her friend, she was able to return home to her family.
Chapeyama was buried on Thursday afternoon at Granville Cemetery, with only a handful of close friends and relatives in attendance. Not even her three daughters and close friends were allowed to view her body.
The only image of their mother that will forever linger in the grief-stricken daughters' minds is when her almost lifeless body was ferried to Budiriro Polyclinic in a wheelbarrow.
Chapeyama, a single mother, will not be around to see her daughter Precious (21) get married next month.
She will also not be there to nurture her other two daughters, Sandra (13) and 16-year-old Mercy, into adulthood.
Mutodzaniswa and Chapeyama's story will resonate with millions of Zimbabweans now living in fear of the cholera pandemic that is spreading like wildfire after it was first detected in Chitungwiza last month.
According to government's conservative figures more than 100 people have died of cholera in Harare, Beitbridge, Gweru, Kadoma, and Zvishavane in the past few weeks.In Beitbridge alone, more than 50 cholera deaths have been recorded as the pandemic spread to neighbouring South Africa.
But aid agencies and human rights activists say the death toll is much higher than the government acknowledges. Although there is a cholera outbreak in Harare's Glen View township, The Standard observed that not much was being done to stop the disease from spreading.
At every street corner and shopping area there were heaps of uncollected garbage while many houses still had burst sewer pipes that have reportedly gone for months without being repaired. Despite promises by Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) to restore normal water supplies, nothing has materialised.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe says it allocated about R18 million to the authority to ensure that the situation is normalised but up to now nothing has changed.
Desperate residents are still relying on unprotected wells for drinking water. Although the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has placed water tanks in different parts of the affected suburbs, the water was still being rationed so that everyone in the area benefited.
One Glen View resident, Rosemary Muriva who attended Chapeyama's funeral, said people who were aware of the dangers of cholera still find themselves forced to drink potentially infected water. "When a home is faced with illness such as cholera, the person who is taking care of the patient needs to be constantly washing their hands and sanitising the home," she said. "You know what cholera is like with diarrhoea and vomiting, but how do you keep the home clean and prevent other people and yourself from picking up the infection when water is not readily available in the home?"
Angry residents wanted to know what happened to the foreign currency the RBZ said it gave Zinwa to restore water supplies to most of Harare's suburbs.
But a source at Zinwa who requested anonymity maintained that the water authority had not received any money from the RBZ as promised. "We were never given any money, we just read about it in the newspapers," said the source.
"Even if you go to the RBZ you will not find any records that Zinwa was allocated this money. The water problems are going to continue because we have shortages of water chemicals. That is the honest truth and the RBZ should be ashamed for lying."
The chairman of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, Dr Douglas Gwatidzo, said the RBZ was trying to "play to the gallery" and "splashing" huge sums of money in the media while nothing on the ground was happening.
Gwatidzo said cholera was a very easy disease to treat and with the huge sums of money that the RBZ claims to have availed the outbreak would "long ago have been under control".
Unicef says other places outside Harare such as Chitungwiza, Kariba, Mudzi, Makonde, Kotwa, Chinhoyi, Nyamapanda and Beitbridge are also battling cholera outbreaks.
Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa said the government was doing its best to bring the epidemic under control but its resources were overstretched. He said his ministry had received US$2 million from the RBZ so far and expected another disbursement this week to fund the epidemic. "Please don't alarm the people when reporting on cholera but alert them," he said.
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