The number of typhoid cases in Harare continues to rise on a daily basis with council putting the number of people treated for the contagious disease at 756.
Typhoid or typhoid fever is transmitted through the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feaces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium salmonella tyhi.
Harare City Council has linked the latest outbreak to the vending of fish, raw and cooked meat, mainly in Kuwadzana whose samples tested positive for salmonella typhi.
The fish, which is usually sold in very unhygienic conditions, is harvested from Lake Chivero where pollution levels have alarmed environmentalists.
Council has admitted it was overwhelmed by the outbreak, with new patients flocking to Beatrice Infectious Diseases Hospital, which can only accommodate 60 patients.
The local authority has also been forced to transfer TB patients from Beatrice to Wilkins Hospital, which is also grappling with its own challenges.
Fears are that the outbreak is spreading to other suburbs like Kambuzuma, Warren Park and Dzivarasekwa where patients are being treated for diarrhoea.
Chances of the outbreak becoming citywide cannot be discounted because the bacterium that causes typhoid is food-borne.
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The outbreak is already invoking memories of the 2008-2010 cholera outbreak that killed 4 293 people and left 98 741 infected countrywide.
Experts said the epidemic was the worst in Africa in the last 15 years. But what boggles the mind is that the authorities are always caught napping in such emergencies.
It is now common knowledge that the main cause of such outbreaks is the lack of access to safe water and rising poverty in Harare’s most populated suburbs.
The collapse of the water supply, sanitation and garbage collection systems have made such outbreaks a common feature during the rainy season. Inevitably, residents tend to rely on the rain water that becomes readily available, but is heavily contaminated.
It is with this in mind that we urge authorities to declare the typhoid outbreak an emergency so that resources can be marshalled to fight the scourge right from the source.
Therefore the move by Finance minister Tendai Biti to use $40 million of the $110 million Zimbabwe is drawing from its International Monetary Fund account to address water and sanitation problems in Harare, Bulawayo and Marondera could not have come at a more opportune time.
But Harare, which was the epicentre of the devastating cholera outbreak, needs much more than that.
Nothing short of an overhaul of the city’s water and sanitation systems will stop the recurrence of these preventable diseases.
The declaration of the current typhoid outbreak as an emergency would also galvanise other partners to ease the burden on the already overstretched local authority.
Awareness campaigns are necessary because typhoid can be easily avoided by practising sound personal hygiene.
Typhoid is not as fatal as cholera, but its recurrence is certainly a sign of worse things to come.
