MANY words have been uttered and long column inches expended on the cholera outbreak that has preoccupied the attention of authorities in Lusaka and beyond and left the most affected communities in near panic.
There has never been a public health issue in the history of this country that was fought quite so ferociously as this cholera outbreak, the army being conscripted into the campaign.
The ministries of Health and Local Government led the fight from the front, as was their mandate and proper duty to do; directing the campaign in identifying the sources of the infection, the various means of its spread and formulating a strategy for its containment.
There is a feeling that given the huge financial, material and personnel resources thrown at the epidemic, the results have been rather long in coming. And this is not far from the truth.
Just as true, though, is the fact that this epidemic, as predictable as it was (given the very ‘healthy’ conditions wittingly and unwittingly cultivated by the millions of Lusaka’s residents), was never going to be dealt with in one fell swoop.
This was a monster with many heads; multiple epicenters and multiple causes.
President Edgar Lungu must be lauded for ordering all the different wings of the Armed Forces, including Zambia Police and their cousins at Correctional Services, out of their barracks and camps to lend the weight of their numbers, experience and resources to the cause.
Less than three weeks since the men and women joined the fight, the results have begun to show and there is now much relief that the epidemic is being restricted, with ever fewer numbers of new cases being recorded.
Yesterday was the first in many long days since October that a death related to the epidemic was not reported.
So how has the presence of the men and women in uniform helped the cause? One of the major causes of the insanitary conditions that define almost all of Zambia’s urban settlements is the humongous volume of poorly managed solid waste generated by the minute by the thousands, if not millions, of citizens who derive their livehoods from trading in markets and at roadside stalls.
Street vendors are a huge and positive factor in the economy, as every economist will tell you. Where this segment of economic player is properly managed, the national economy can only gain; from taxes and job creation.
However, when left to their own devices, as has been the case in Zambia for so long, the bad has the potential to be overrun by the good.
They generate mountains of garbage that is indiscriminately disposed of –often in convenient places like drainage system, which, when clogged up, creates flooding when the rains begin to fall. This polluted mix then finds itself way into the system that supplies water to the communities whose reckless conduct gave rise to the flooding. A devious, self-perpetuating seasonal cycle is created.
Every effort by embarrassed local authorities to deal with the source of the problem is, not surprisingly, almost always met with fierce resistance.
The authorities are then reduced to half-hearted attempts to deal with the problem, usually by way of plaintive, politically correct pleadings for roadside traders to get back to half-empty markets or stop littering.
Well, there was none of the pleadings, this time around. The men in uniform issued the orders and they were obeyed; traders who had assumed ownership of space in the corridors and wide swathes of busy roads, constricting both human and vehicular traffic, decamped with regimental obedience.
It will be waste of opportunity and resources if they are ever allowed back by the lack enforcement on the part of those whose duty it is to do so, local councils.
To the men and women in uniform, the nation salutes you.