Cholera claims 8 in Chimanimani

of the Johanne Marange Apostolic Sect, were hospitalised in Chimanimani.
All the cases were recorded from Rusitu District of Chimanimani, which was hit by a cholera outbreak last month.
Director of Epidemology and Disease Control in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, Dr Portia Manangazira said they were continuing dialogue with members of the sect so that they can consider accessing health care facilities.
“We are still making dialogue with members of the Marange Apostolic sect so that they can access treatment at health care facilities,” said Dr Manangazira.
She said the 16 cases from Rusitu were detected early in March but were only attended to later in the month as the sect members were allegedly hiding the sick from members of the public.
“People were hidden in the area so they could not receive medical assistance, the matter only came to light late March,” said Dr Manangazira.
In a bid to curb cholera and other non-communicable diseases, Government is training rapid response teams to assist in responding to emergency disease outbreaks.
Dr Manangazira said they had introduced integrated disease surveillance rapid response teams.
Twenty-eight districts in Manicaland, Masvingo and Mashonaland West provinces have been trained to deal with disease outbreaks.
Although the training programme was introduced to equip health personnel with information when handling cholera cases specifically, Dr Manangazira said they were looking forward to training the personnel in handling all common health emergencies.
“We are going to use this mechanism to train these teams in all high epidemology diseases so that they are able to deal with any other health related issue,” said Dr Manangazira.
She said the programme, which begun last year was expected to end in May.
Nationally, Dr Manangazira said cholera cases have been contained.