DISCLAIMER: This article was originally written in Portuguese. We had to seek translation services for it. Any misrepresentation of facts was not deliberate.
DEAR EDITOR – The World Health Organisation has called for a doubling of efforts to combat the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. We are all concerned about the deaths of Zimbabweans from the cholera outbreak in that country, especially because cholera is a simple disease to treat and in this day and age, people should not really be dying of this disease.
My own country, Angola has been battling with the epidemic for almost a decade now. We have not had the same exposure and hence our efforts have been kept under wraps from the international community.
As you all know Angola is a country with substantial deposits of oil and many Western countries invest in the country and quietly remit the wealth to their own countries, so Angola has been spared the media onslaught that Zimbabwe has had. This onslaught, in one hand, has been helpful for concerned donors and humanitarian agencies to come to Zimbabwe. On the other, it has been used for propaganda purposes.
Unfortunately, our people die today and the world is spared that news. I have been working with French and Portuguese small agencies to ensure the survival of my people – day in and day out. We have appealed to all the rich oil companies to help eradicate this disease but that has never happened.
Let me give you the shocking statistics, Mr. Editor.
In 1987, Angola had over 16,000 reported cases of cholera and 1,510 deaths from the disease. In 1988 alone, a year later there were 15,100 cases. Between 1997 and 2005 no one reported cholera in the country. It was kept under wraps.
Between February 2006 and May 2007, there were 82,204 reported cases of the epidemic with 3,092 cholera related deaths. The outbreak reached 16 out of 18 provinces. This year alone, the cases are already in the thousands although the official statistics are not yet out
I do not mean to diminish the extent of the crisis in Zimbabwe, but would like to highlight that my country has been left off the international radar. Angola has huge resources, is a rich country with a lot of oil revenues that could be used for the betterment of the lives of our people.
Please allow the world to see this reality that is unfolding out our countries and the politicization of the plight of people. If all the rich companies that invest in Africa were concerned about public health all of these crises that we experience today would have been a thing of the past. There should be corporate social responsibility by all these big oil and mineral companies that make huge profits, but fail to look after the populations of the countries they make the money from.
BP or British Petroleum made profits of US$17.29 billion in 2007 yet today we still have to fight hard to get NGOs and humanitarian agencies to support our efforts.
This is the story of our African continent and the plunder of its riches today.
Julia Guercia – Opinion
Portugal
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WHITE FANG • na.com
Subject: get used to it, Rhodie.
Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:45:34 • JOHNNY COME LATELY - you obviously not a white Zimbabwean! They speak completely different to the way you do. Am not an Environmentalist or a Doctor, but I reckon that:
its to do with temperatures and humidity and where you are placed geographically. I met someone in the Triopical Diseases Hospital who swore she'd never visit Africa even if she got a FREE ticket because it has diseases no one has found cures for yet - cos the rest of the world is more interested in cluttering up space with satellites!
The northern hemisphere is not subjected to disease as is the southern hemisphere and the reason, i believe, is cos the northern hemisphere drops to cold and below freezing sometimes for almost six mnths. this will kill off anything - even people die of hypothermia here.
its also good for studying and working hard - you just dont wanna go outside so you stay indoors and work hard and (some) succeed. this explains why the Germans, Swedish, Polish, Japanese and Chinese, North Koreans and Russians and Canadians are far more intelligent than your average Brit. Temps in those countries are even lower than in the UK.
I understand in August the French takes an annual holiday because its too hot to do anything else?
on the other hand. the southern hemisphere has perhaps six weeks during which temperatures (sometime during June and July) drop drastically but by midday its hot all over again - so this incubates the dying diseases back to life. Australia is the same. New Zealand, nearer the Antarctic is colder and has no lizards or frogs.
its got nothing to do with white or black.
so yes, the Europeans did come to our country in 1888 but how many black scientists and surgeons, vets, astronauts and accountants and lawyers did they educate and raise in that period eh?
We had almost 100 years years of being downtrodden and kicked about, but when the Rhodies left we only had one Univ. Now we have univs in Mutare, Gweru and Bulawayo. Unheard of in your time. Now when we educate our own you entice them to the north with false promises of a better life? So yes, we will continue to blame you. Learn to live with it.
Also, when you Rhodies left it was because your cooks and gardeners were jumping the borders to fight in Chimurenga II so they could come back one day and be their own bosses - and probably because also the Rhodie wives were now deprived of our strong young men in their homes, and did not want to do those menial chores in the heat! its common knowledge that the Rhodie men were famous for warning their women against forming relationships with the gardener or the cook for that matter. Have you read Doris Lessing's book, The Grass is Singing (1973)?
Johnnyb • hahajohnnyb@gmail.com
Subject: Blame Whitey!
Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:59:29 • Typical, blame white people for the failures of black people. Poverty is Africa is not the fault of the west. Poverty in Africa is the fault of Africans. Europeans came into Africa and were prosperous, they shared that prosperity with the black people, but that was not good enough, the blacks wanted it all. So White people left, and now the Africans are reverting back to the state where White people found them, and its whitey's fault all over again.
What is it about our 2 races, in that the white man can go anywhere in the world and make a successful civilization, but even when handed a successful civilization on a platter, blacks can only destroy.
I have a perfect solution for your cholera, its called nature. Your people are too stupid to form or maintain a complex social order able to support a large population. It would be best for future Africans, if the west just left Africa to its own devices and sooner or later they will have completely regressed back to a hunter gatherer existence, live in dung huts and tell each other legands about how it be whitey's fault.
Mhofeti • pasizw@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Unbelievable really!!
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:54:57 • Amazing how two people can be compacted so contradictingly by the same article. To me it made sense that if BP contributed say US$1 billion of its profit as a social responsibility that could make cholera history.
N/A • N/A
Subject: N/A
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:23:09 • Omuhle you are naive. Its not only water chemicals that prevents cholera there are a host of other things including poverty. We need to eradicate poverty. But the WEST pays lip service to this-pretending they have Africa's interests at heart when in fact-Africa is still the dark continent where they can go and loot and take our resources back to EUROPE.
We need to deal with poverty and improve the lot of the African people, by extension if the standard of living of our people improves- including improvement of our infrastructure, this cholera thing will have no where to stick.
In Zimbabwe it was first the infrastructure in Budiriro and Chitungwiza that gave in -thanks to Sanctions and CDE Tsvangirayi, then our health sector failed-again thanks to the two above.
If you dont beleive what I say its your right. But lets all challenge the West to remove sanctions for two or three years, while ZANU PF continues to rule, if nothing changes within those two years, I for one will say ZANU PF is the problem.
But if sanctions are still there, it will take a nuclear bomb to convince me that the problem is ZANU PF and not the sanctions and Mr Tsvangirayi.
Omuhle • n/a
Subject: n/a
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:50:36 • Unbelievable, please let us know the reasons why your country cant buy water chemicals.
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