Tap water safe: Expert

This was said by Dr Prosper Chonzi, the director of health in charge of health services at Harare City Council upon the background of a soaring typhoid outbreak that has so far claimed one life and seen over 200 people from Dzivaresekwa and Kuwadzana treated for the disease.
“Tap water is safe for drinking because it has enough chlorine,” Dr Chonzi said.
Dr Chonzi said they suspect that the source of typhoid in Dzivaresekwa is shallow wells, which are heavily contaminated with fecal matter.
He said the majority of sample results they collected from the wells showed that they were contaminated.
“Some of the results read ‘too numerous to count’, meaning that there were too many coliforms (bacteria) found in the water,” he said.
Dzivaresekwa residents turn to open and shallow wells when there is no tap water.
Dr Chonzi said to mitigate the problem of water supply in the area, they have started drilling boreholes.
With assistance from its development partners, the city council has so far drilled two of the five boreholes intended for the area and will be ready for use anytime from now. A visit to Rujeko Clinic yesterday revealed that a sizeable number of patients seeking treatment for typhoid are still trickling in at the clinic – the typhoid camp in Dzivaresekwa.
“We suspect that cases of typhoid are still high because either the awareness campaigns that we have done in the area have encouraged more people to come in for treatment or that in some people, the typhoid bacteria was still at incubation stage,” Dr Chonzi said.
The incubation period for typhoid is between three days and two weeks.
He said they have also intensified surveillance to other areas such that diarrhoea cases reported will also be tested for typhoid.
“So far, typhoid is still concentrated Dzivaresekwa and Kuwadzana, but we have intensified our surveillance to other areas,” he said.
Commenting on diarrhoea cases in Harare, Dr Chonzi said they are on the increase and it is a seasonal expectation.
In typhoid alert, released yesterday, the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare warned people who travel to Dzivaresekwa and Kuwadzana to take preventive measures against the disease lest they spread it to other areas.
“To date typhoid has not yet spread outside Harare but with the advent of the festive season people from affected areas who may be infected or are carriers may visit other places and spread the disease,” warned the ministry.
These precautions include standard hygienic practices of washing hands with soap or ash before and after meals, eating hot food, boiling or chlorinating drinking water, washing fruits before eating and disposing waste appropriately.
Owing to erratic water supplies, residents resort to the bush system for toilets, a situation which leads to an increase in diarrhoea cases this rainy season as waste is washed down the streams – normally a source of drinking water.