HARARE, 8 December 2008 (IRIN): – I am afraid that if we won’t all die of cholera, then hunger will finish off those that remain, said a miserable Givemore Nyakudya, who lost his daughter to cholera three weeks ago, while the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it had failed to raise enough money to feed the nearly half a million Zimbabweans in need of food.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of a cholera outbreak that has claimed the lives of 589 people; 13.960 cases had been reported in nine of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) bulletin.
– If people are not on full rations, the numbers of malnourished are going to increase – more Zimbabweans are going to become vulnerable and susceptible to disease, said Richard Lee, the WFP spokesman in Southern Africa. – It will make it much harder for them to fight cholera.
The food agency has little choice; it had expected to raise enough money to feed 4,2 million beneficiaries in December, and up to 5,1 million Zimbabweans – more than half the country’s population – by January 2009, but has managed to find money to feed only 3,7 million.
If people are not on full rations, the numbers of malnourished are going to increase – more Zimbabweans are going to become vulnerable and susceptible to disease
– To ensure that families at least have some food rather than no food at all, we have decided to cap the rations to a maximum of six per household, rather than exclude entire households, Lee said.
In November the monthly ration per person was cut from 12 kg of maize-meal to 10 kg, and from 1,8 kg of beans to 1kg.
– We will continue with the cut rations – we still don’t know what will happen next month [January 2009], he said, adding that the agency was considering other options, including borrowing money or food.
Nyakudya, a municipal worker in the capital, Harare, whose two other children have also contracted cholera, said he is no longer “fussy” about what his family ate, as long as they did not starve.
The agency was still trying to determine why donors have failed to respond to the crisis. – It could be any number of reasons – the global recession – the focus is also now on the crisis in the Horn of Africa, said Lee.
On 4 June, a few weeks ahead of the second round of voting in the presidential ballot on 27 June, the ZANU-PF government of President Robert Mugabe imposed a blanket ban on all NGO operations for alleged political bias against the government, with the exception of those doing hiv/aids-related work. Mugabe, the only candidate, won the run-off ballot but the election was widely condemned as flawed. The ban on some NGOs was lifted on 29 August.
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