Cholera is spreading through Zimbabwe like wildfire, with thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths. The government has paid little attention to the people amid the power struggle between the president and the opposition prime minister.
Poorly maintained sewage pipes have let sewage leak into drinking water, spreading the disease to thousands, and thousands more have fled to South Africa, which fears it can't cope with so many people and that the infection will spread there.
Cholera is caused by comma-shaped bacteria called Vibrio cholerae. They release large amounts of toxin in the gut, and the body tries hard to flush it out through diarrhoea, losing so much water and salts that the stool becomes as watery as rice water.
The simple answer is to drink clean or boiled water and replace lost salts with oral rehydration solution. But in Zimbabwe there is no wood or fuel, which turns this simple solution into a problem. Anti-diarrhoea medicines are not needed for cholera: what saves lives is replacing fluids quickly.
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