More than 4,000 people have died in a cholera epidemic that has hit at least 85,000 people, Zimbabwes Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Thursday, warning the figures were likely an underestimate. Tsvangirai told an emergency meeting of health workers that the epidemic that has swept the country since August was a sign of the collapse of Zimbabwes health system.
"We have had a clear warning of this in the national trauma of over 85,000 reported cases of cholera, and over 4,000 reported cholera deaths by the end of February 2009," he said.
"This is most likely a dramatic underestimate of the real figures given the unreported cases and deaths in communities," he added. The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday put the official death toll at 3,955, citing figures collated the previous day.
"Those figures are certainly underestimated since we do not have access to many places," a spokeswoman at its Geneva headquarters said. The WHO are expected to issue updated figures on Friday. Zimbabwes health system was once the envy of Africa, but nearly a decade of economic collapse has left hospitals and clinics in shambles. Doctors and nurses went on strike for months to protest their salaries, which had been reduced to pittances by world-record inflation.
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