Michelle Faul, AP, December 8, 2008
Thousands of Zimbabweans are dying, uncounted and out of sight in a silent emergency as hospitals shut, 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,” 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 in a telephone interview. “Nothing is working.”
{snip}
Once a major food exporter, Zimbabwe has been crippled by shortages of necessities including food and medicine as Mugabe, the leader since independence in 1980, clings to power.
As businesses collapse, unemployment has risen to 80 percent with the majority of the population depending on handouts from a growing diaspora; more than a third of a population has fled, many to South Africa and former colonizer Britain, but some as far as New Zealand.
{snip}
To the cholera deaths, the report said, it was necessary to add people with diabetes who run out of insulin, appendicitis cases, asthma attacks, bleeding ulcers and septicemia—”all treatable conditions from which thousands of deaths are now occurring.”
Save the Children, a British charity, said hundreds, if not thousands of pregnant women and their children “stand a very high risk of death.”
{snip}
Both Rusike, of the community health group, and Women of Zimbabwe Arise said the cholera epidemic could be linked directly to the government’s failures. The disease is caused by contaminated water and food, in Zimbabwe’s case the collapse of water and sewage services.
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.
{snip}
Rusike warned in June 2007 that Zimbabwe was in danger of suffering epidemics of cholera and malaria when he called for Parirenyatwa to intervene as water supplies became more erratic.
Mugabe’s government took control of water supplies from city and town councils when the councils were taken over by opposition politicians in elections three years ago.
Rusike said the government officials fired water engineers and other staff and replaced them with “friends and relatives with no qualifications in water management.”
Last week, water authorities cut all supplies in Harare, the sprawling capital of about 2 million people and the epicenter of the cholera epidemic, saying they had no purifying chemicals and feared piping contaminated water would help spread the disease.
Original article
(Posted on December 10, 2008)
Comments
Zimbabwe’s population is going back to what African IQ levels deem to be sustainable. Goat-Herders and small-scale subsistence farming.
And right on schedule too!
Then, many of those who are now dying from starvation and disease expressed their will at the ballot box. The current situation in Zimbabwe is just one of the unfortunate consequences of “democracy”.
Many of the “Liberal” community supported and applauded (and in fact are in large part responsible for instigating) the decision of those voters. Rather than to point their fingers at Mugabe, turning him into their scapegoat, perhaps they should examine their own culpability in the matter.
Ronald
I’m glad that the liberal media is belatedly criticizing Mugabe’s reign of terror after 28 years.
Let’s see how many journalists and politicians take the next step and apologize for working to force the late, great Ian Smith out of office.
Save the Children, a British charity, said hundreds, if not thousands of pregnant women and their children “stand a very high risk of death.”
Save the Children. Save the children for what? Save the girls so that they can become teen mothers and perpetuate the vicious cycle? Save the boys so that they can become sperm donors for the same cause? Save the boys so that when they turn the ripe old age of 9, they can carry an AK-47 to make sure the Robert Mugabe’s, Charles Taylor’s, Nelson Mandela’s can plunder, pillage, and rape with impunity? I assume the charitable contributions buy food and medicine? Could I request that my contribution be used for hysterectomies and vasectomies? I can envision the instant-gratification “Do-gooder”, white charity volunteer cringing with indignation. We all have to stand before God on Judgment Day and I don’t want to be held accountable for contributing to the problem.
Save the children? Why? In the 80’s I gave money to african famine relief. I sometimes wonder how many of those children that were saved are now anti-american and anti-west.
This can’t get worse, can it?
Can it?
This is a tragedy! How could it have happened? My hands are wrung raw. I won’t be able to sleep tonight after reading this. I blame the racist white Zimbabweans who recklessly and irresponsibly failed to adequately train their black replacements in public health and water treatment procedures. We should spare no expense in doing whatever is necesary to help these unfortunate people and their valiantly struggling government.
What is amazing is that Mugabe managed to completely destroy the country in peacetime. Most of the other African hellholes at least had a war to justify their decline in Somalian level.
You reap what you sow.
“Zimbabwe used to have one of the best surveillance systems in the region”
Yes, “used to” and “once”, back when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia and was run by white people….
And for some reason, people fail to see that the only succesful states in a otherwise black and failed africa, were the ones were whites ruled, Rhodesia och Apartheid Southafrica.
And now that white Rhodesia have become black Zimbabwe, it’s all going down the drain and it’s falling into the same state as the other black nations on the continent.
Yet people don’t see the pattern…
“Rusike said the government officials fired water engineers and other staff and replaced them with “friends and relatives with no qualifications in water management.”
Just like New Orleans, L.A., Detroit, Atlanta, and Houston.
“Save the children? Why? In the 80’s I gave money to african famine relief.”
Every time I see some European royalty or celebrity or publicity seeking actor or actress photographed with starving African children I always think “what will all those cute little boys be doing in 12 years?’
Answer. Toting their assault rifles around in a drug and drink addled stupor murdering their own people. Raping and impregnanting those cute little girls now grown up. Cutting off body parts of children to be used in voodoo rituals. Destroying whatever infrastructure is left.
In the 1930’s the population of Ethiopia was 7 million. In the 1970’s the population of Ethiopia was 33 million. Bono and Geldorf decided it was the responsibility of the world to feed the Ethiopians who were unable to feed themselves.
35 years later, the population of Ethiopia is 77 million. Ethipia still cannot feed itself. So the rest of the world continues to feed Ethiopia thus doubling its population every 30 years or so.
How many Ethiopians will there be in 2030? 120 million? 150 million? When will Ethiopia learn to feed itself? Never, as long as the Europeans and North Americans keep supplying their food and medical care.
Another question, why do North American and European countries welcome Ethiopian physicians and nurses? Ethiopia is extremely underserved in medical care. As soon as they qualify Ethiopian physicians and nurses immigrate to civilized countries.
Then the western countries send medical do gooders to Ethiopia. It is an exchange of medical professionals. Ethiopian medics leave Ethiopia for the good life in civilized countries where they are entitled to affirmative action jobs. Western medics go to Ethiopia where the work for subsistence pay under horrible living and working conditions.
According to vdare.com, there are more Ethiopian physicians in the city of Chicago, not the metro area but the city itself than there are in all of Ethiopia.
The more we feed and care for Africans, the more Africans there are.
The State Department then imports the surplus Africans to the United States. Once here, they set off a crime wave. They are also entitled by law to preferential affirmative action employment and college admissions thus discriminating against native born white Americans.
This is the fault of the communist dictator, not Whitey. But of course Whitey will be the one who pays for all this.
Yesterday at a funeral for one of his cohorts, Mugabe announced his government has stopped cholera, the cholera scare was only bruited about because the West wanted to invade Rhodesia. There is a video of mugabe on the BBC with these words of wisdom.
Out of food, Zimbabweans eating cow dung
December 11, 2008 CNA
Caritas International Harare
Caritas Internationalis is warning that the crisis in Zimbabwe is so grave that people facing crushing food shortages are mixing cow dung with their food. With pressure continuing to mount on President Mugabe to relinquish his hold on power, Zimbabweans are suffering the consequences of his government’s policies.
Besides the lack of food, people are also suffering a cholera epidemic and crippling hyperinflation. Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight reports that “people in Zimbabwe are dropping dead on the streets from Cholera. They’ve witnessed people mixing cow…
We all know what the ‘solution’ will be - since it was white imperialism that caused this- the solution will be an airlift of refugees to the UK, US and Ireland.
How many blacks were living there before Whites arrived? Does anyone know? (I would bet my bottom dollar that White organizational skills saw an increase in the black population). Given the I.Q. levels of black Africans that number would be the ‘natural’ or “Darwin” level of population. It will return to that, in time.
I am almost fell out of my chair laughing when I heard that Do-gooder, Jimmy Carter, was turned away from Zimbabwe. I remember reading that he and Andrew Young were very instrumental in pressuring Rhodesia to hand over power to Mugabe. Will Carter finally be honest with himself and admit he was wrong? I am not holding my breath. My prayers go out to the few whites that have been able to hang on in that hell hole. God Bless Ian Smith a giant of a man.
“How many blacks were living there before Whites arrived”?
I believe that when the first White settlers arrived in Rhodesia
Mugabe: ‘There is no cholera in Zimbabwe’
Since Whites lack legitimacy in African politics, we must step back and allow “Diggy” Mugabe to fix the terrible conditions brought on by White Civilization and the festering responsibility that comes with the Zimbabwe Renaissaince.
The black African simply cannot rule. As one gentleman said, when Ian Smith’s Rhodesia was around, the communities were fairly harmonious until the lib labs of Andrew Young and Jimmy Carter tore this American ally and white civilized country and gave it to the wonderful Robert Mugabe. Now we see what Obama could possibly do.
