KEY POINTS:
HARARE- Robert Mugabe says the cholera crisis ravaging Zimbabwe has been stopped, even as the disease prompted South Africa to declare a disaster area on its northern border and the United Nations said the death toll had risen again.
In a televised address yesterday that showed the 83-year-old President to be in complete denial over the epidemic, he said there was now "no cholera".
Shortly after Mugabe's address, Elisabeth Byrs, the UN spokeswoman in Geneva, said: "The figures speak for themselves." UN statistics show the death toll has risen to 783, with 16,403 reported infections. "We hope the joint efforts of the United Nations and Government will contribute to halting the epidemic."
The disease, which is preventable and treatable, is more commonly associated with natural disaster areas or war zones. The most recent outbreak was in Eastern Congo where conflict has displaced 250,000 people.
But it has spread rapidly through the once-prosperous southern African nation where basic infrastructure has eroded to a dangerous degree and whose shattered health system has been unable to respond.
- INDEPENDENT
