As long as DWAF isn’t doing its job, it’ll take more than military intervention or Mugabe’s denials to stop the cholera epidemic, but as Abré J Steyn reveals, it’s a disease that’s easy to prevent or cure.
If you try hard and long enough
to let things get out of hand, they eventually will. If you do all the things that have the potential to turn a prosperous country on its head, that’s where it will end up. This is exactly what Mugabe achieved in Zimbabwe through his ideological shortsightedness. He flirted with fate, ignored all warnings and now his once-beautiful country is on the verge of total collapse, while his people are starving and hundreds, if not thousands (as is claimed), are dying of cholera.
Cholera is potentially dangerous to field sportspeople, who frequently travel far. It’s a severe diarrhoeal disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and in extreme cases, it’s one of the most rapidly fatal illnesses known. Without treatment, a healthy person could die within two to three hours after the onset of symptoms.
More commonly, massive diarrhoea and systemic shock within four to 12 hours after cholera contraction will cause death in 18 hours or several days. Transmission to humans is mainly by contaminated water or food, but flies play a significant role in spreading the disease.
Most antibiotics have no value in cholera therapy, although a few like tetracyclines may shorten the duration of diarrhoea and reduce fluid loss. Treatment is not difficult or expensive and involves the rapid intravenous replacement of lost fluids and ions until diarrhoea ceases. If glucose is added to this solution, it can be administered orally, eliminating the need for sterility and intravenous administration. With this simple treatment, patients on the brink of death can be miraculously cured and mortality reduced by 90%. Cholera is a disease of filth – filthy water, filthy surroundings, filthy sanitation, filthy hands and filthy, contaminated clothes. This lesson was learnt in the 1800s, when in a matter of less than 40 years, cholera erupted at least 12 times in the Americas. It was the same in the overcrowded industrial cities of England, where one out of every two children died before the age of five from diseases like cholera. However, in 1842, when a report by London lawyer Edwin Chadwick concentrated on clearing dirt and clean living, the foundation was laid for the Great Sanitary Movement, which drastically decreased diseases like cholera by the second half of the century. Cholera smouldered as an endemic disease in the Ganges River Delta of India for centuries. References to deaths due to dehydrating diarrhoea on the Indian subcontinent date back to Hippocrates and Sanskrit writings. Mostly it was the children dying, as adults developed a degree of immunity.
The first long-distance spread of cholera to susceptible populations in Europe and the Americas began in 1817 and by the early 20th century, six waves of cholera had swept around the world in a devastating pandemic fashion, killing millions. The disease then subsided and remained relatively dormant, occurring only in southern Asia until 1961, when a new biotype re-emerged in the Philippines and sparked the seventh major global cholera pandemic. This tough and aggressive biotype spread and broke out explosively across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe, even where it had been absent for a century, killing over 100 000 people in the Western Hemisphere alone.
Like new internet viruses, popping up all the time, in 1992 the classic cholera biotype resurfaced in Bangladesh with a new antigenic structure which prevented immunity, gave longer life to the virus outside the body and had the capacity to produce a more severe illness. It spread rapidly to at least 11 countries in southern Asia and then to Africa where a third of the sub-Saharan population suffer from hunger because of mismanagement, which encourages cholera to spread. In April 1997, this form of cholera broke out among the 90 000 Rwandans in temporary refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the first 22 days, 1 521 died.
Epidemics like these have always been something that happened in far-off places, but not anymore. Now it’s on our doorstep. South Africa has never been so susceptible to the outbreak of a major cholera epidemic than now. Not only are our rivers filthy sewerage drains, but our dams have become cesspools of decaying human waste – the ideal conditions for cholera to proliferate.
Unlike Pharaoh in the Bible who heeded Joseph’s message about seven lean years ahead and prepared for it, our government will rather shoot the messenger, than listen to what he has to say. By now the dismissal of Dr Anthony Turton, a leading water scientist from the CSIR and the banning of his report is old news. It remains, however, top of the list of “most stupid things” ANC institutions have done since assuming power in 1994.
He quite correctly pointed out that “South Africa is a water-poor country” and the almost total lack of engineering expertise at local level, which should safeguard this scarce resource, “has to be addressed”. When people are denied access to clean drinking water, “social instability will grow and South Africa will slowly slide into anarchy and chaos. The recent xenophobic violence is … but a foretaste of things to come”. This is nothing but the truth.
As fish are dying again by the thousands in the Vaal River while the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism twiddles its thumbs, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry minister, Lindiwe Hendricks, has been reported saying her department will, as high-priority, prosecute farmers who steal polluted water from the Vaal. Can you believe that? Surely, she was misquoted. I just don’t believe we have such an ignorant minister.
Contact Abré J Steyn on 083 235 4822 or e-mail [email protected].
Contact Dr Anthony Turton on e-mail [email protected]. |fw
How to prevent cholera when travelling
For travelling field sportspeople and others, preventing cholera is simple. Boil all water before you use it, even for washing. Live cleanly, wash hands frequently.
Wash and peel all fresh produce purchased locally and keep flies off your food and eating utensils.
We’ve travelled Zimbabwe and beyond for years, always used boiled river water and never got even minor stomach bugs. So can you.
