"We stand, as it were, on the shore, and see multitudes of our fellow beings struggling in the water, stretching forth their arms, sinking, drowning, and we are powerless to assist them." ~ Felix AdlerOne of the recurring themes on this blog has been the hunger, disease and destitution which has become the lot of so many in today’s crowded, complex world. The reasons I cite these situations are many, but chiefly (a) a strong desire for fellow Americans to keep things in perspective. We are fortunate in unimaginable ways that we often take for granted. Let’s not. And (b) when we have the means that we contribute toward solutions rather than remain ignorant or indifferent.
The Zimbabwe cholera epidemic is a frightening reality which ought not be part of our modern times. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil involves characters that become immersed in a cholera outbreak nearly a century ago. The film adaptation, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, is a movie based on a fictional novel. We somehow do not want this to be real life, and in point of fact divorce ourselves somewhat from the realities by seeing them re-enacted on the silver screen.
Unfortunately, the tragic realities in Zimbabwe are not a fiction, are quite devastating and appear to be out of control. While it is true that eighty percent of all disease in the world is caused by unsafe drinking water, no one anticipated the current state of affairs in Zimbabwe as doctors have abandoned hope due to a breakdown in the country’s infrastructure.
A simple Google search uncovers news accounts on this epidemic from all parts of the globe. Meanwhile, our local papers speak only of the hunger, lack of drinking water, and illegal poaching. Starvation is rampant, as is disease. But in our papers here in Minnesota there is no mention of the spreading cholera crisis.
Many years ago I learned a little about this awful disease which causes extreme diarrhea and dehydration to such an extent that death is almost certain within days. The “rice water stools” gave me the creeps when I learned about this symptom of the disease. I also recall reading that Tschaikovsky was so depressed after the poor reception of his Sixth Symphony (one of my favorites) that he deliberately drank cholera-contaminated water to end his life, which did indeed occur three days later.
No one in Zimbabwe is choosing cholera. It’s a horrible way to die.A China news report reads: More people die in cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe
And another story declares, Cholera threatens 1.4 million people in Zimbabwe: MSF
A Canadian news report by Kelly MacParland puts a more cynical spin on it...
Robert Mugabe's latest gift to Zimbabwe: An outbreak of cholera
Robert Mugabe’s latest gift to the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe is an outbreak of cholera that has killed dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of victims.
Reports from Zimbabwe indicate the outbreak began weeks ago and has spread quickly through rural areas and shantytowns to reach Harare, the capital. After initially trying to smother news of the situation, Mr. Mugabe’s government has been forced to acknowledge the situation, while continuing to try to minimize the casualties.
Robert Mugabe’s latest gift to the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe is an outbreak of cholera that has killed dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of victims.
Reports from Zimbabwe indicate the outbreak began weeks ago and has spread quickly through rural areas and shantytowns to reach Harare, the capital. After initially trying to smother news of the situation, Mr. Mugabe’s government has been forced to acknowledge the situation, while continuing to try to minimize the casualties.
Don't know how far this goes, or how it will end. I only know we have much to be grateful for and let's not take it for granted.
4 comments:
There's a cholera epidemic going on in Iraq, too, caused by destruction of their infrastructure by the war.
It's spread to 9 of the 18 provinces.
http://www.google.la/search?q=cholera+iraq&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
I did my own Google search and it looks like there's plenty of coverage of this breaking news... in international media. China, France, Geneva, etc. Not much in our U.S. papers.
It's a mess and a tragedy...
Everything is so much easier when we wage war on "their" turf and not our own, too.
>>>>>>>>I did my own Google search and it looks like there's plenty of coverage of this breaking news... in international media. China, France, Geneva, etc. Not much in our U.S. papers.
It's also been reported on liberal US blogs. It was predicted as inevitable as early as May 2003 by the World Health Organization, (part of the UN, of course).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/may/08/iraq.georgewright
I don't suppose it was too hard to predict, as so many water-treatment and electricity-producing plants were destroyed by the "precision bombing" -- "Shock and Awe", as the US military put it, (or "blitzkrieg", in the Nazi parlance).
Here are a couple of matter-of-fact excerpts describing the "Shock and Awe" concept, from an approving CBS article of January 24, 2003:
<<(CBS) They're calling it "A-Day," A as in airstrikes so devastating they would leave Saddam's soldiers unable or unwilling to fight.
If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March the Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq. As CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, this is more than number that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War.
On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles.
"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan.
"The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before," the official said.
The battle plan is based on a concept developed at the National Defense University. It's called "Shock and Awe" and it focuses on the psychological destruction of the enemy's will to fight rather than the physical destruction of his military forces.
"We want them to quit. We want them not to fight," says Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the Shock and Awe concept which relies on large numbers of precision guided weapons.
"So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," says Ullman.
In the first Gulf War, 10 percent of the weapons were precision guided. In this war 80 percent will be precision guided.
..................
"You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted," Ullman tells Martin. >>
"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad", indeed. Yet they say they weren't trying to kill people. They committed a war crime, of course, and bragged ahead of time, in the main-stream media, that they were going to do it. And they had majority support of the American people.
Right-wing blogs and the mainstream media have pretty much ignored the cholera epidemic, as they've pretty much ignored the 10's or 100's of thousands of other civilian deaths caused by the war.
Yet the right-wing is still complaining that the MSM has a "liberal bias".
It's a sad state of affairs.
Oops. I forgot the link to the CBS article.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/24/eveningnews/main537928.shtml
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