Analysis: Harare faces more hardship as typhoid outbreak takes hold

It seems incredible that three years after a devastating cholera epidemic that killed more than 4,000 Zimbabweans, this battered southern African country is in the grips of an outbreak of another disease straight from the Middle Ages.

In the last month, clinics in one township alone – Kuwadzana – have treated at least 950 people for typhoid. President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party blames the outbreak on “illegal Western sanctions”, according to state ZBC radio.

Municipal officials say it is is due to contaminated fish being sold cheaply on the streets.

The highly-contagious disease is characterised by diarrhoea, fever and vomiting. Several recent deaths at Harare’s central Parirenyatwa Hospital are now being treated as possible typhoid cases.

The official Herald daily newspaper said yesterday 71 severe cases were being treated at the Beatrice Road Infectious Diseases Hospital. Authorities have had to clear out TB patients who were being treated at the institution.

Cases have also been noted in the townships of Kambuzuma, Warren Park, Dzviresekwa and Whitecliff.

City health director Prosper Chonzi told the Herald he “bet his last dollar” typhoid has already spread to the sprawling dormitory town of Chitungwiza.

Fears are high the outbreak will spiral across Zimbabwe, still struggling to recover from a decade of economic turmoil.

“It [typhoid] has been bad here,” a mother-of-one texted me from Budiriro township, near to Kuwadzana.

“The Harare municipality was pumping us dirty water.”

The Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) said the coalition government formed by Mr Mugabe and former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in 2009 “lacked urgency” in dealing with public health woes, with frequent burst sewers, irregular water supplies and unregulated food sales.

“Since the outbreak of cholera in 2008 conditions in the suburbs have not greatly improved,” said ZADHR in a statement.

Scenes from the cholera epidemic are being replayed: white treatment tents set up in townships, queues of patients waiting for attention, a father lugging his typhoid-stricken son on his back to a clinic.

Harare City Council has banned all fishing in dams around the city after samples confiscated from Kuwadzana vendors last week tested positive for salmonella typhi, the typhoid bacteria.

“You find there is raw sewage coming from Chitungwiza straight into the water sources and that’s one factor that causes typhoid,” town clerk Tendai Mahachi said.

Police have chased away fish vendors in the last few days, but residents say they’re operating at night.

The authorities have launched a door-to-door campaign to persuade residents not to buy, despite the cheap prices offered. The authorities have also shut down popular outdoor barbecue spot Kwa Mereki, putting around 300 people out of work, and say they will close down city hotels.

A hotel worker tested positive for typhoid last week – not the kind of news that will help Zimbabwe’s slowly-recovering tourist industry. On Tuesday Mr Mahachi announced that water supplies to better-off suburbs would be diverted to the townships.

“We are going to starve the low-density suburbs because we feel the people there can afford to buy water,” he said. Suburbs like Borrowdale – near Mr Mugabe’s mansion – will now only get piped water twice a week.

Typhoid generally has a lower mortality rate than cholera, a doctor at a government hospital told me.

But one problem is that typhoid can be “easily confused with malaria” and not correctly treated. Malaria is prevalent at this time of year.

My card says that I was last vaccinated for typhoid in 2000, on my first assignment to this part of Africa.

Vaccinations are recommended every three years for travellers, a luxury not available to most Harare residents.

For now, we’re back to washing all fruit in diluted bleach or potassium permanganate solution.