SWINE FLU: ZIM WILL COLLAPSE, GOD FORBID

BULAWAYO - Should swine flu sift into Zimbabwe then this would dash the hopes of economic recovery for many Zimbabweans here and abroad as the country still battles a cholera outbreak that has claimed thousands. Writes Simba Nembaware

Zimbabwe's vulnerability lies in its battered economy that has seen many earn a living by regularly crossing the South African border as traders. The country's arm for civil disaster watch has failed over the years to put in place means of preventing a major calamity with the cholera outbreak a most recent example.

And it seems the end has begun as the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of South Africa said on Wednesday that two suspected cases of swine flu had been reported in South Africa.

Sapa reported that Deputy director Lucille Blumberg said the first, which became known on Monday, was a woman from the Western Cape who travelled extensively in Mexico earlier this month. She was in contact with the people there while using trains and buses.

The woman was ill with flu-like symptoms on her return to South Africa on April 24, Blumberg said. A general practitioner who treated the woman last Saturday did consider swine flu as a possible diagnosis.

A World Health Organisation report of 18 February 2009 on Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak noted 79 613 suspected cases, including 3 731 deaths as the country battled to contain and quell the outbreak. What exacerbates Zimbabwe's situation is the general collapse of the service delivery system and an alarming shortage of health personnel.

The advent of swine flu, which is a "never - before- seen blend of genetic material from pigs, birds and humans to which people have no natural immunity", will be adding salt to injury for many hopeless Zimbabweans.

AFP reports that the World Health Organisation's Keiji Fukuda said a pandemic was not inevitable and that while the hike in its alert level was a "significant step towards pandemic influenza, it's also a phase which says we are not there yet".

Fukuda noted "that in this age of global travel where people move around in airplanes so quickly, there is no region to which this virus could not spread".

Worldwide, seasonal flu kills between 250 000 and 500 000 in an average year, 36 000 in the United States alone.