Zimbabwe warned on risk of cholera outbreak

An international rights watchdog says Zimbabwe's capital is at risk of a cholera outbreak from collapsed sanitation facilities, broken drains and raw sewage flowing in streets.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday that residents in Harare's poorest townships have little access to clean, piped water, and often resort to drinking water from wells contaminated with feces. The report said some residents often must defecate in the open.

"In many communities there is no water for drinking or bathing, there is sewage in the streets, there is diarrhea and typhoid and the threat of another cholera epidemic," said Tiseke Kasambala, the southern Africa director of HRW. "Harare's water and sanitation system is broken, and the government isn't fixing it."

The rights group said in a report that the poor conditions violate the peoples' rights to sanitation and health. In 2010, Zimbabwe ratified an international agreement promising its population clean water. In May this year, the country voted for a new constitution that enshrined the right to sanitation and water.

One mother told Human Rights Watch: "We have one toilet for the whole house and there are 21 people who live here. The flushing system doesn't work because there is no water, so we have to use buckets. When there isn't any water for flushing we just use the bush."

Aid organizations have helped to provide medicines and sink several boreholes in the capital since 2008, but some of the holes have reportedly been contaminated with sewage.

Several suburbs in Harare don't have tap water, and people are forced to queue for hours to collect water.

"Harare's water and sanitation system has been destroyed by decades of neglect and by ongoing mismanagement and corruption," Kasambala said.

HRW reported that earlier in 2013, the government announced a $144 million loan from the Chinese government to improve Harare’s sanitation system with the help of Chinese engineers. But the terms of that agreement have not been made public, the organization said.

In 2008, more than 4,000 people died from cholera across Zimbabwe when sanitation and water treatment services deteriorated.

Al Jazeera and wire services