Please go here to read Raging Cholera Just Tip of Zimbabwe’s Humanitarian Crisis from Doctors Without Borders. Detailed reports and information are available.
Please go here to sign a petition from the ONE Campaign urging the African Union to act in its role as a guarantor of the new unity government in Zimbabwe.
From the BBC: Where clean water is a pipedream
If you want a graphic demonstration of the health impacts of poor drinking water, look no further than Zimbabwe.
Three thousand people dead, at least 60,000 ill – all from a disease that is almost completely preventable.
In general, with very few exceptions, people simply do not get cholera when the water supply works. It is almost unknown in the west for that single, simple reason.
Here are some articles from various sources on Zimbabwe.
From classroom to clinic, Zimbabwe crisis bites
As Zimbabwe’s politicians wrangle over power, ordinary people are being sucked into a downward spiral of food shortages, spreading cholera outbreaks and collapsing social services.
The school year was supposed to begin on Tuesday, after a week’s delay, but with teachers’ monthly salaries worth just a few loaves of bread, few children are likely to find their schools open, Save the Children says.
Americares Doubles Aid to Zimbabwe
Stamford, CT, Jan. 29, 2009 – AmeriCares is doubling its supply of water purification treatments to Zimbabwe in an effort to stem a deadly cholera outbreak that has claimed more than 3,000 innocent lives. The outbreak is one of Africa’s deadliest in 15 years and experts say more than half of the country is at risk.
With limited medical resources and dismal sanitation, families in Zimbabwe have almost no protection against the disease, which is spread by exposure to unsanitary water. Without treatment, cholera patients experience severe diarrhea and can die of dehydration. Children are especially vulnerable and, sadly, it is often most deadly for them.
Zimbabwe: Soldiers are the new illegal diamond miners
MUTARE, 20 January 2009 (IRIN) – The vast Chiadzwa diamond fields, about 90km southwest of Zimbabwe’s eastern city of Mutare, have come to resemble a military garrison since soldiers evicted scores of illegal miners.
President Robert Mugabe’s government sent troops into the area in late 2008 to flush out the diamond miners, after repeated attempts by the police over the past two years had failed.
The miners have left, but the soldiers remain, their tents dotting a moonscape of pits, and the search for diamonds has not ceased.
Grandmothers Take on Care of AIDS Orphans
IRIN Zimbabwe Humanitarian Country Profile
Lean season in Zimbabwe sees hunger rising
It is the lean season in Zimbabwe – the last few months before harvests arrive in April – and hunger levels are reaching a peak. WFP is targeting more than 5 million hungry people.
WFP is aiming to provide assistance to 5.1 million people across Zimbabwe in February – the highest number of people in a single month since the regional crisis began in 2002. Many of them have sold belongings to survive. The country’s economic decline – combined with low harvests in 2008 – has also left large numbers of people in urban areas in need of assistance.
This increased caseload will receive reduced rations so that the existing stocks can be stretched to reach the additional numbers of hungry.
(New York, 30 January 2009): The number of cholera cases in Zimbabwe has surpassed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) worst-case scenario figure of 60,000, an indication that the epidemic is still far from under control despite concerted efforts by local health authorities, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations. The disease has claimed the lives of 3,095 people as of 28 January.
WFP cuts cereal rations for hungry Zimbabweans
Churches Share Out of Their Poverty
In July 2005, many “shanty towns” in the cities of Zimbabwe were plowed over, leaving 300,000 homeless across the country. Some found housing with friends and family. However, many were left with nowhere to go.
In one city, the homeless were welcomed with open arms into 10 churches—all different denominations and community makeup—throughout the city. They not only housed the homeless, they also fed them and clothed them, and they did so in the midst of severe food shortages. Local people made huge sacrifices to serve their needy guests. Those helping were of all different racial, national, and generational groups. But then things got worse
HIV and AIDS Leaves Girls Orphaned
Zimbabwe abandons its currency
Zimbabwe rival to enter coalition
SIM Zimbabwe Famine Relief Project
SIM Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Zimbabwe
SIM Works With South African Partners to Provide Relief for Zimbabweans
From this month’s Lausanne World Pulse: Zimbabwe Today a Nation in Need of Prayer.
Untold Hardship. Here is a quote from the article.
This is the reality of life in Zimbabwe today for the majority of the people who do not have access to foreign currency. Their own currency has become worthless so much so that a church that received a check in their collection for “six quadrillion dollars” (that is, six with fifteen zeroes!) did not even bother to deposit it in the bank.
An apple costs fifteen million dollars; a single loaf of bread costs two months’ salary for workers at an informal chrome mine outside of Harare. (At this mine, they work twelve hours a day, with no safety precautions, tunneling one hundred yards into the earth, lighting the way with candles. They then drill holes into the sides, push in dynamite, ignite it, and run for their lives. Astonishingly, their monthly salary of six million dollars buys half a loaf of bread!)
World Vision Latest News ONE Poverty UNlocked
SocialVibe