Zimbabwe's Nightmare Continues

Robert Mugabe's disastrous rule continues to haunt Zimbabweans as the specter of a widespread cholera epidemic makes an already awful situation that much worse. Mugabe's government, which had previously claimed that there wasn't an epidemic and that things were under control, finally relented and admitted that they need foreign assistance to get the epidemic under control.

Zimbabwe is enlisting the help of doctors from Bangladesh to help arrest a cholera outbreak that’s sickened more than 29,000 people and risks infecting more as heavy rain threatens to spread contaminated water, a World Health Organization official said.

Zimbabwe’s government agreed to accept assistance from 10 doctors from the South Asian country, which itself is prone to outbreaks of waterborne diseases, said Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. Members of the Bangladeshi team will be deployed in each of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces, he said.

“The Bangladeshis have a huge amount of experience dealing with cholera,” Hartl said in a telephone interview today.

Cholera, which causes profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to fatal dehydration and shock, has killed 1,518 people in Zimbabwe’s biggest outbreak of the disease, the WHO said in a Dec. 26 statement. The United Nations agency said 26,497 cases had been reported by Dec. 25. Latest estimates put the number of cases at more than 29,000, Hartl said today.

The medical treatment is one thing, but the reason that the disease has become epidemic in Zimbabwe is because Mugabe's economic policies have destroyed the country and the infrastructure has broken down - disintegrated is more like it.

Mugabe refuses to tolerate any dissent, and continues to hold human rights advocates.

The group includes human rights activist Jestina Mukoko, who went missing for three weeks before being brought to court last week.

The police had initially denied they were holding Ms Mukoko, who was seized from her home by a group of armed men.

The abduction and arrests have raised doubts about a power-sharing deal.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed a deal to join a unity government in September but this has never been implemented.

He says he will pull out of the deal unless the abduction of opposition activists stops.

There's no reason that Tsvangirai should believe that a power sharing deal is possible. Mugabe simply is unwilling to share power, and he's stolen two elections to assure himself of continued power for the foreseeable future.