JOHANNESBURG
Thousands of Zimbabweans are dying, unaccounted for and out of sight in a silent emergency as hospitals shut down, clinics run out of drugs and most cannot afford private medical care, health groups say.
Even as deaths from a cholera epidemic climbed into the hundreds, international and local organizations say many more are dying needlessly in a disaster critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s government.
The toll will never be known, according to Itai Rusike, executive director of the Community Working Group on Health - a civil society network grouping 35 national organizations.
“Zimbabwe used to have one of the best surveillance systems in the region,” Mr. Rusike said in a telephone interview. “But phones are not working, nurses are not there, so their information system has collapsed. … It is very difficult to tell how many people have died.”
“These are symptoms of a failed state,” he said. “Nothing is working.”
The British charity Oxfam agreed with estimates of thousands of unreported deaths because of the collapse of the health system and said the situation will get worse with the onset of the rainy season, which lasts until February.
“When you look at people who are already weakened by hunger, many already weakened by HIV and AIDS … . And with rainy season comes malaria, and we know anthrax is spreading, it’s really just a recipe for disaster,” spokeswoman Caroline Hooper-Box said in neighboring South Africa.
She said many people Oxfam interviewed in Zimbabwe say they have cut back to one meal in three days. Some are trying to survive on insects and berries.
Once a major food exporter, Zimbabwe has been crippled by shortages of necessities, including food and medicine as Mr. Mugabe, the leader since independence in 1980, clings to power.
In a new health report published last week, the civic group Women of Zimbabwe Arise recounted the case of an 8-year-old boy who fell in a schoolyard and twisted his knee.
“A week later, he was dead,” the report said. “The death certificate cited cause of death as ’swollen knee.’ … But the real cause of death is clear criminal negligence of the worst kind on the part of the [Mugabe] government.”
Last week, Health Minister David Parirenyatwa appealed for help from international organizations.
“Our central hospitals are literally not functioning. Our staff is demotivated, and we need your support to ensure that they start coming to work and our health system is revived,” he was quoted as saying in the Herald newspaper.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. would continue to press the international community to take action on Zimbabwe, but also stressed the importance of pressure from the country’s African neighbors.
In Brussels, the European Union extended a travel ban to 11 more Zimbabwean officials Monday and joined calls for Mr. Mugabe to step down.
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