A staff member of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) checks patients' intravenous (IV) fluid infusions at the Beatrice Road Infectious Diseases Clinic in Harare. The clinic has established a cholera treatment centre © WHO/Paul Garwood
Since the initial outbreak of cholera in late 2008, almost 100,000 cases have bee recorded, with more than 4,165 fatalities (as of May 2009 - http://ochaonline.un.org/CholeraSituation/tabid/5147/language/en-US/Default.aspx). Poorly coordinated government measures for disease prevention and treatment have impeded international efforts to provide assistance. While tons of water purification drugs have been supplied to various communities, new cases continue to emerge due to the poor condition of municipal water treatment systems.
Harare’s main water purification plant, Morton Jeffray, was designed in 1953 to treat 700 million liters of water daily. Today its treatment capacity has dropped to 450 million liters - far below the clean water demands of Harare and adjacent cities Norton and Chitungwiza.
Experts at the plant say that ageing equipment heavily compromises the quality of water pumped to municipalities on a daily basis. Conveyor belts are broken and workers have to dump treatment chemicals into the water by hand. Flow metres, used to measure the amount of water that flows into chambers for treatment, are inoperative and technical staff has had to resort to estimating measures.
Harare failing to meet daily water treatment chemical requirements
The murky sewage infested waters of Lake Chivero.Harare's major source of water.
Since the collapse of the Zimbabwe National Water Authority's sewer treatment system, raw sewage has been flowing into Harare’s major source of water, Lake Chivero. This makes the quality of water supplied to Harare is very poor and difficult to treat using conventional chemicals.
With foreign currency shortages, the supply of chemicals has been inconsistent. In 2008, authorities received one small consignment from the Namibian government, but this shipment was insufficient to effectively treat the water supply in urban centers throughout the country.
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