UK dismisses Mugabe's Claim that Zimbabwe Cholera Crisis is over

A man pushes his relative in a wheelbarrow to a cholera polyclinic in Harare. The nationwide outbreak of cholera, caused by a breakdown in basic water and sanitation services, has left more than 6,000 people infected (Desmond Kwande/AFP/Getty Images)

'I don't know what world he is living in,' says UK's Africa minister

The Guardian Dec. 11th. - Britain and France today dismissed assertions by Robert Mugabe that an outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe was under control. The epidemic has killed almost 800 people but, in a defiant speech by the Zimbabwean president, he said his government had stopped the outbreak. However, Britain's Africa minister, Mark Malloch-Brown, was scathing of Mugabe's claims. "I don't know what world he is living in," Malloch-Brown said during a one-day trip to South Africa, where he visited a Johannesburg church housing 1,600 Zimbabweans who have fled their country. "There is a raging humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe as well as an economic crisis and still there is no representative government able to lead the country out of this disaster," he said.

The French foreign ministry criticised Zimbabwe for denying visas to French medical staff. "Contrary to what Mr Mugabe says, the cholera epidemic is not under control. France strongly regrets this decision and calls on Zimbabwe's authorities to allow aid to reach the population," a ministry spokesman said. The team of six included three specialists from the French foreign ministry's crisis centre, two epidemiologists and a water treatment expert.

Mugabe's claims, which flew in the face of assessments from international health officials, came in an hour-long televised speech at the funeral of a party official who had died in a car accident. "I am happy we are being assisted by others and we have arrested cholera," Mugabe said in his address. He attacked what he described as western plans to invade Zimbabwe and topple his government. "Now that there is no cholera there is no case for war," Mugabe said. He described Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, and George Bush, the US president, as "crooks" who were "guilty of deliberate lies in order to commit acts of aggression". The Zimbabwean leader made his claims about stopping cholera even as South African officials declared the border with Zimbabwe a disaster area and warned that extraordinary measures were needed to control the rising number of cholera cases. "The whole of the Vhembe district has been declared a disaster area," said Mogale Nchabeleng, a spokesman for South Africa's Limpopo provincial government. The government took the decision after an emergency meeting earlier this week. The district includes Musina, a bustling town at the border crossing between South Africa and the cholera-hit town of Beitbridge in Zimbabwe. Musina is the entry point for thousands of illegal immigrants fleeing the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe. "These people come in infected and have to be treated. That has been a strain on the capacity of our health infrastructure to respond," Nchabeleng said.

South Africa said it had no plans to quarantine Zimbabweans crossing over to Musina or other border towns. Aid agencies have warned of Zimbabwe's cholera crisis spreading to neighbouring countries, and the region's shared waterway, the Limpopo river, has tested positive for cholera. The outbreak, coupled with an economic meltdown, has prompted calls for international humanitarian assistance, as well as calls from western and some African leaders for Mugabe to resign. The World Health Organisation reported yesterday that the cholera crisis in Zimbabwe had worsened. The UN today raised the death toll from the easily preventable disease to 783. The UN said more than 16,000 cholera cases had been reported in Zimbabwe, where the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy and health care system has left victims to fend for themselves and driven many to try to escape to South Africa.
by Mark Twan
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World’s Hungry Close to One Billion’

Financial Times Dec. 9th. - The food prices has pushed the number of hungry people in the world to almost 1bn, in what the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation described on Tuesday as a “serious setback” to global efforts to reduce mass starvation. “The ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty,” the FAO added. The Rome-based organisation said that a preliminary estimate showed the number of undernourished people rose this year by 40m to about 963m people, after rising 75m in 2007. Before the food crisis, there were about 848m chronically hungry people in 2003-05. “High food prices are driving millions of people into food insecurity, worsening conditions for many who were already food-insecure, and threatening long-term global food security,” the FAO said in its report The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008.

Prices of agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn and rice jumped to record levels earlier this year, triggering food riots in countries ranging from Haiti to Egypt to Bangladesh and prompting appeals for food aid for more than 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Although food commodity prices have fallen about 50 per cent from this summer’s all-time highs, they remain well above pre-crisis levels. The cost of rice, for example, has halved since July, but it still trades at prices that are 95 per cent above 2005 levels. In addition, the weakening of some emerging countries’ currencies against the US dollar has partially erased gains from the drop in commodity prices.

The new FAO estimates also show the food crisis has thrown into reverse a decline over a quarter-century in the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the world’s population. The percentage has risen now to about 17 per cent, up from a record low of 16 per cent in 2003-05 period, but still below the 20 per cent of 1990-92. “Soaring food prices have reversed some of the gain and successes in hunger reduction, making the mission of achieving the internationally agreed goal on hunger reduction more difficult,” the FAO said.

Almost a decade ago, world leaders agreed in New York to the UN Millennium Development Goals, calling among other targets for a halving between 1990 and 2015 in the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Jacques Diouf, FAO director-general, said in a foreword for the report that the task of achieving the UN’s hunger reduction targets in the remaining several years to 2015 will “require an enormous and resolute global effort and concrete actions”.

However, with leaders’ attention firmly focused on the global financial crisis and its economic ramifications, many observers now believe that the hunger and poverty reduction targets are no longer achievable by 2015. The vast majority of the world’s undernourished people – more than 90m – live in developing countries, according to FAO estimates. Of these, 65 per cent live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. In sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people – or almost 240m – are chronically hungry, the highest proportion of undernourished people in the total population.
By Javier Blas
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Disclaimer No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise. Mozlink

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Wednesday, December 10th. is the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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