Global Courant 2023-05-24 16:32:22
South Africa’s Gauteng province declared a cholera outbreak on Sunday, with 41 confirmed cases and 15 deaths so far.
As cholera deaths rose to 15 this week in Gauteng, South Africa’s most populous province, many residents blame the government for a lack of clean water for drinking and other household uses.
The health department in Gauteng province on Sunday announced a cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, an area about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the administrative capital of Pretoria, in the city of Tshwane.
Nearly 100 people have been seen in hospitals and 37 have been admitted to wards, the city council said Monday, warning residents of Hammanskraal and surrounding areas not to drink tap water.
41 cases have now been confirmed across the country, including 34 in Gauteng province, one in Limpopo province and six in Free State, a spokesman for the health department said. The cases in the Free State province are unrelated to the others, he added.
Kagiso Sadiki can’t remember a time when Hammanskraal’s tap water was fit for consumption. His 53-year-old cousin Michael Sadiki died within a week of falling ill.
The tap water is brown and dirty, the 37-year-old told reporters.
“Everyone has the right to clean water,” he said, visibly saddened, as he sat under a lemon tree. “I hope my cousin’s death wasn’t in vain.”
“We drink that water, but they don’t want to purify that water, or to… build another pipe to give us the right water,” says 36-year-old Sello Samuel Lekoto, an unemployed resident of Hammanskraal who is in the Jubilee Hospital treated for cholera.
The municipality states in statements that the water supplied by the city in the Hammanskraal is not drinkable, but that the city supplies clean drinking water to informal settlements several times a week with tankers.
“The water issue in Tshwane has been a problem for a number of years,” South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation David Mahlobo said in a briefing.
“There have been political problems… (and) problems about conflict in such a way that citizens have been exposed,” he said.
Cholera can cause acute diarrhea, vomiting and weakness and is mainly spread through contaminated food or water. It can be fatal within hours if left untreated.
South Africa recorded its first two cases of cholera in February following outbreaks in nearby Mozambique and Malawi, the two most affected countries by 2023, according to the United Nations.
