planet earth looks blue

The cholera epidemic continues to spread in Zimbabwe.  It is officially a public health crisis, with international teams, such as Doctors Without Borders coming in to help the people where they can.  Zimbabwean doctors have been on strike for the past five months, demanding their salary in euro’s or dollar’s in the face of Zimbabwe’s other epidemic - inflation.  

So far over 3,000 people have died, and as many as 60,000 have been infected.  Cholera is a terrible disease that is spread through bacteria in the water supply, which, depending on the intake of bacteria can lead to death.  People suffer from horrible diarrhea, that eventually dehydrates and kills.  Cholera is actually easy to treat if people have access to adequate health care.  

The continued outbreak of cholera is partially due to the political situation in this southern African nation.  President Robert Mugabe, who has long been accused of human rights violations, refused to succeed power to Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of The Movement for Democratic Change.  Tsvangirai calls the cholera epidemic man-made, siting the fact that if the Mugabe government wanted to prevent and control the outbreak, they could.  Tsvangirai and Mugabe will be forming a coalition government in the wake of this disaster.  With international help as well, they will have to solve the cholera issue, and then begin facing the conditions that perpetuated the outbreak in the first place.