Zimbabwe: Harare Residents Trust alerts residents of typhoid outbreak
The Harare Residents Trust sent an alert to residents of the Dzivaresekwa suburb in light of a recent outbreak of the bacterial disease, typhoid fever, according to a report from the Zimbabwe news source, ZimEye Wednesday.
A statement from the Trust reads as follows:
“Alert: There has been a typhoid outbreak in Dzivarasekwa.The local clinic transferring about about 15-16 people to Beatrice Infectious Hospital everyday since last week.The most affected are the pupils at Nhamburiko Primary school. Harare City Council failure to provide clean water to the residents is compounding the situation!”
City council members blame the outbreak on the failure to provide clean, potable water to the residents.
Image/CIA
Issues with the lack of clean water and the associated typhoid and diarrheal diseases is not new for the African nation.
To date, diarrheal diseases have affected 428,000 people nationally, resulting in the deaths of 265 people, mostly children under five years of age, reports the Herald.
Typhoid fever is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi. Salmonella typhi lives only in humans. Persons with typhoid fever carry the bacteria in their bloodstream and intestinal tract. In addition, a small number of persons, called carriers, recover from typhoid fever but continue to carry the bacteria. Both ill persons and carriers shed S.typhi in their feces.
You can get typhoid fever if you eat food or drink beverages that have been handled by a person who is shedding S. typhi or if sewage contaminated with S. typhi bacteria gets into the water you use for drinking or washing food. Therefore, typhoid fever is more common in areas of the world where handwashing is less frequent and water is likely to be contaminated with sewage.
