Zimbabwe - "There Isn't Enough Food To Go Around"

[Cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe - Footage from Sky News]

Just when you think the situation couldn't get worse in Zimbabwe, it does.  The cholera epidemic is continuing to spread - according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):

"Several new areas of Harare and other towns and cities have recorded outbreaks this week, and the total affected population is over 20,800."

There are now at least 1,518 confirmed deaths, though the real fatality number might be far higher.  In many ways, Zimbabwe is facing a perfect storm when it comes to the disease.  As OCHA reports:

"Factors contributing to the spread of the disease are poor water and sanitation, particularly in remote rural areas, weak health services and a health staff strike, according to the World Health Organization. Compounding the situation, health staff are unable to obtain salaries from the bank and so are unable to travel to work."

All of which means that the disease is far more fatal than it otherwise would be - with proper medical care, 99% of people infected can survive.

Yet in Zimbabwe, the fatality rate is now estimated at 5.4%, and in some areas fatality rates of up to 33% have been reported.

To make matters worse, the World Food Program is now reporting that as many as 5.5 million Zimbabweans - just under half the total population - will need food assistance in early 2009.

Child malnutrition has also skyrocketed. Save the Children reports that acute child malnutrition in parts of Zimbabwe has increased by almost two-thirds from last year:

"New figures from Binga district indicate that 7.6% of children aged between six months and five years are suffering from acute malnutrition, up from 4.5% in October last year...Chronic, long-term malnutrition in Binga district is also up by around 50%. 31.2% of children under five are underweight from chronic malnutrition compared with 20.9% in October 2007."

According to Lynn Walker, Programmes Director for Save the Children in Zimbabwe:

We have already been forced to reduce the rations of emergency food we are delivering because there isn’t enough to go around. If, as we fear, the food aid pipeline into Zimbabwe begins to fail in the new year the millions of people who rely on emergency food aid will suffer...There is no excuse for failing to provide this food. The innocent people of Zimbabwe should not be made to suffer for a political situation that is out of their control.

Yet nothing is ever quite so straightforward, especially when you consider that Mugabe's regime uses it's control of food aid to starve political opponents, and that state security forces have been known to hijack food supplies.

As my co-blogger Michelle recently asked - "do you donate the food knowing that it will likely be used as yet another weapon by the government against the population, but hoping that at least some of it will get to the needy, or do you withhold aid in hopes that it will hasten Mugabe's fall?"

For more information, Michelle has been following the crises closely - you can see her Zimbabwe posts here.