Cholera spreading fast in SA

Zimbabwe collapse exporting killer disease

CHOLERA is spreading in South Africa — and fast.

There have been more than 2000 infections in Limpopo and Mpumalanga has recorded it s first cholera death. Nine new cholera infections were reported in Mpumalanga yesterday.

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This brings to 13 the number of people who have died from the disease.

Department of health spokesman Fidel Hadebe said: “We are dealing with a communicable disease. People are travelling from Zimbabwe [ and] moving into Gauteng and Western Cape .”

He said health workers “are working flat out. Sometimes people seek help too late when they have complicated symptoms. We are dealing with a complicated problem and we just cannot quarantine people.”

• An Mpumalanga health department spokesman, Mpho Gabashane, said the province was on high alert after laboratory tests confirmed that a South African woman who died on January 5 had succumbed to cholera after visiting Zimbabwe with her husband. Nine other cholera cases were recorded at Mpumalanga clinics and hospitals.

Gabashane said the provincial health department was monitoring the rivers in all the areas in which cholera had been reported.

“We have received allegations that people have died in the area as a result of diarrhoea and, based on these allegations, we have undertaken to investigate all cases . ”

• A spokesman for the Limpopo health department, Phuthi Seloba, said cholera infections in the province had reached 2023, with 49 new cases confirmed yesterday — all the patients are South African.

• Western Cape health department’ spokesman Eric Ntabazalila said there had been seven cholera infections to date.

• In KwaZulu-Natal, the department of health’s spokesman, Leon Mbongwa, said only two cholera cases had been confirmed in the province. Four suspected cases had been incorrectly diagnosed.

• Gauteng has 33 cholera infections confirmed, and it is suspected that 173 people have contracted the disease, health department spokeswoman Phumelele Kaunda said.

Both North West and Eastern Cape have been relatively unscathed by the disease, but isolated cases of cholera infection have been reported. — Additional reporting by Sashni Pather

- The Times