Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
PUBLIC health experts have noted the need for caution and sustained efforts to prevent the resurgence of cholera, despite the government’s recent declaration of Zimbabwe as now free of the disease.
The country’s successful battle against the diarrheal outbreak has been hailed as a significant achievement.
Health experts, however, warn that the battle is far from over, with calls to shift focus towards preventing future outbreaks.
President of the Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians, Dr Brian Abel Maponga emphasised the critical role of improving water and sanitation infrastructure in combating cholera.
“Long-term strategies require resolving the water and sanitation problems in growing populations, especially in urban areas. The established settlements and also the new settlements, we know those areas are having problems with water and many times families have to seek water from boreholes and deep wells. There were also some water quality assessments being done even those boreholes that are in use be it in Harare or outside.
“Some of them are contaminated so what it means is, we need to put all hands on deck to make sure that all sectors with the lead of the government across the different government departments partners the private partners continue to be seating on the table to use the energy and resources that we had during the outbreak to now focus on resolving the continuous problems we are seeing with water and sanitation and without an outbreak right now is the time to act,” he said.
Public health expert Dr Kudzai Masunda highlighted the need for a comprehensive approach to cholera prevention.
“So, Zimbabwe developed a cholera elimination strategy up to the year 2028 in line with the global roadmap of ending cholera by 2030 so this strategy has several pillars and several arms that it is looking at to manage cholera outbreaks. So, long term we have healthcare workers or a healthcare system that needs to be responsive to cholera. It means we need competent people who can identify and manage cholera cases. We also need to improve on our prevention strategies and this we have already started to do.
“ If you remember in 2018 we introduced the cholera vaccination campaign as well as in this previous outbreak we had cholera vaccination within the hotspot areas this is also one of the strategies within the elimination roadmap in that when there is vaccination it gives the country about 3 to 5 years of reduced risk of getting cholera some of these strategies include dealing with the WASH sector where WASH infrastructure need to be upgraded to reduce the incident of cholera,” said Dr Masunda.
Government is ramping up efforts to improve access to clean water through the expansion of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programmes to avoid future cholera outbreaks.
The Presidential Borehole Scheme has become a key component of this initiative, with several boreholes being sunk nationwide.
