British Red Cross campaign manager, Anna Payne, volunteered as a member of their emergency response unit in December 2008. Below is an intimate log of her personal experiences whilst working on the frontline for the British Red Cross response team in Zimbabwe during that Christmas.
As the Christmas party season stepped up a gear, I found myself cancelling my plans and packing my bags for Zimbabwe with a very different Christmas and New Year ahead of me. As I was on call that month for the emergency response unit (ERU) I’d been keeping a close eye on the escalating cholera crisis in Zimbabwe so I was both excited and nervous when we got the go ahead for the unit to deploy.
I was there for a month with three colleagues from the British Red Cross mass sanitation unit supporting our colleagues at the Zimbabwe Red Cross with their cholera response programme. The unit’s remit is essentially to prevent the spread of disease through practical techniques, such as latrine building, and promoting hygiene messages – with the capacity to help up to 20,000 people.
Over 30,000 cases had been reported prior to our arrival in Harare and deaths were on the increase. Due to the economic conditions in the country, sewage systems were falling to bits and the health service was struggling to cope. In fact the main thing I remember from my stay was people’s daily struggle to survive and provide for their families in a country where supermarket shelves were empty, water and electricity were in short supply. Soon after we arrived the printing of a $10 trillion Zim dollar note was announced. By the time we left this wouldn’t have bought a loaf of bread.
Units from Norway, Japan, France, Austria, Finland and Spain all arrived with us to support our Zimbabwe colleagues so once we got the Ministry of Health go-ahead the units divided up to make sure the Red Cross was covering all the affected areas in the country. My team headed south to the Midlands Province with the Norwegian team and set up a base in Gweru, a small city four hours from Harare. From there we made contact with our local Red Cross and Ministry of Health and began visiting the areas where outbreaks were most severe.
We travelled long distances to find remote hospitals or communities where the basic infrastructure had broken down and they could no longer treat cholera patients adequately. In these places we found just a few dedicated staff or community leaders working tirelessly – with no running water, limited medicines, frequently no electricity and often going without food themselves. We set about replacing the basic cholera treatment facilities they had – often little more than blankets laid out in a field with drips strung up to trees – with tents, beds and medicines. We also organised hygiene education – making sure people knew about hand washing and food preparation – and built latrines and washing points to support community health.
Since the fundraising target for the appeal remains far short of what is needed to help this desperate situation, it was more important than ever that we helped people in simple and effective ways. Christmas and New Year passed in a whirl of activity as we made sure we reached as many people as possible. By the time the next team came to relieve us in mid-January we had given out hundreds of tools, soap, disinfectant and other equipment and trained hundreds of people in good hygiene to avoid spreading disease.
Thanks to the amazing people we met I felt very sad to leave this beautiful, troubled country but hopeful that we were helping our Zimbabwe Red Cross colleagues towards better times.
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