adminhands, with the human waste of those who already have the disease. Stop the contamination, particularly of water sources, and you stop the diseases, and incidentally at the same time eradicate bilharzia. It is as simple as that.
These diseases tend to enter the city and spread during the rains, almost certainly because there is so much water flowing. Dry streambeds flood, waste is washed into rivers and can flow into the dams. Most of the contaminated food is either fish harvested from a contaminated lake, or food washed with contaminated water.
Most worrying the major outbreaks of these diseases have occurred in the last few years. For almost a century, from shortly before the First World War when piped water supplies became available from Cleveland Dam to soon after the turn of the millennium, Harare and its satellites were largely free of epidemics.
There were cases of cholera and typhoid. But these were limited. And in almost all cases they were confined to a single family, or a single household, that had the misfortune to eat contaminated fruit or fish brought in from outside the city.
So even when sewage treatment plants were substandard, even after 1950 when the city started drawing water from dams downstream of its drains, even when there was very tight water rationing, such as in the late 1940s and the early 1990s, we were largely free of serious outbreaks.
The fact that more people live in the city should not be a reason. Huge cities around the world, from Brazil to the USA via Europe, China and Japan, do not lose control of public health simply because a single city can house more people than live in Zimbabwe.
Water supply problems in the first decade of this century were a contributory cause, but boreholes providing safe water were drilled and most people learned quickly how to protect a well from run-off and the need to boil drinking water if it was from a dubious source.
Right now water supplies are a lot better than what they were before these disease outbreaks started, and a lot of work has been done to renovate sewage works. So what is seriously different in Harare between the 1990s and today?
For a start, there were a lot more health checks then. People handling food for sale to the public in stores and restaurants were regularly checked in surprise visits, and there was a lot more enforcement of the by-laws banning vending of prepared food. We need to bring back those levels of enforcement.
We are glad to hear that the city council is doing just that, but it must maintain pressure, not just raid one day and then forget a place for a decade.
We have suggested before that we need more public lavatories; people must not be forced to use the bush when caught short. Even a few rows of Blair toilets along river banks and in other open areas will help a lot. Keeping sewage out of water sources is essential.
We must be far more serious about ensuring waste is not deliberately dumped in rivers, nor accidentally washed into them by rainwater.
The outflow of all sewage treatment works needs to be tested, especially these days when it is supposed to be pure enough to be dumped into rivers.
If there is a problem it must be fixed, and if the outflow in contaminated then surely we could dump chlorine granules or some similar germ killer in the effluent while repairs are made.
Harare is a modern city, founded after Victorian engineers found the simplest way to prevent cholera and typhoid and similar diseases was to ensure water supplies and sewage were kept separate.
There is no excuse for us not doing so, and letting the city be closer to a 19th century urban area, rather than the capital of a modern and progressive state.
Online Reporter