Essay by Eric Worrall
Al Jazeera promoting climate change explanations instead of exposing political incompetence or worse.
Cholera: An overlooked outcome of climate change
Global warming is exacerbating the spread of a disease that should have been consigned to the dust bin of history a long time ago. We need to take action now.
Robert Kampala Regional Director, WaterAid Southern Africa
Published On 23 Feb 202423 Feb 2024…
Climate change-related extreme weather and the destruction it causes are making headlines on a regular basis across the world. Yet the profound health implications of the climate emergency are often left untold.
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Zambia, for example, is currently experiencing its worst cholera outbreak to date with more than 18,000 confirmed infections. The disease has already killed more than 600 people, a third of them children, and led to aid agencies warning of an “uncontrollable health crisis” in the country.
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Countries in Europe and North America – once crippled by this disease – have long eliminated the threat of cholera through the provision of safe water and sanitation services for their entire populations. These successes should be replicated in countries fighting cholera today. The catastrophic, preventable cholera outbreaks in Southern Africa must be a wake-up call for all governments and development partners to increase funding for water, hygiene and sanitation, especially at this time of crisis when climate change is fuelling a surge in waterborne diseases.
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Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/23/cholera-an-overlooked-outcome-of-climate-change
Climate change is not causing cholera outbreaks, political incompetence is causing cholera outbreaks. Singapore, perched almost right on the equator, has no problem keeping their water safe to drink.
It is a particular disgrace that Zambia is suffering water treatment issues, that foreign donors and charities like World Vision appear to be doing the heavy lifting, instead of the Zambian Government.
Sea salt and electricity is all that is needed to make water safe to drink.
Zambia has plenty of hydroelectricity and lots of mining revenue. Zambia is landlocked, but Zambia has good access to salt from domestic salt mines and an established import market.
If you run an electric current through ordinary salt water, the salt is converted into Sodium Hypochlorite, a widely used water treatment chemical. Anyone who owns or has visited a salt water swimming pool has seen this process in action.
Given how easy water purification is, perhaps the current President of Zambia Hakainde Hichilema can explain why more mining revenues aren’t being spent on making Zambian water completely safe, and providing adequate medical help for the 18,000 victims of the Zambian Cholera outbreak.
Zambian President Hichilema appears to have experience in the mining business. According to The Panama Papers, a massive leak of confidential banking documents from Panama, President Hichilema was a director of the Africa focussed Bermudan mining company AfNat Resources Ltd between March and August in 2006. Hichilema apparently resigned this directorship just before he was elected as President of the Zambian United Party for National Development in September 2006.
No doubt President Hichilema will leverage his insider knowledge of the African mining industry to ensure Zambian water treatment operators and doctors receive the funding they need, to treat the sick and to eliminate future Cholera outbreaks.
This isn’t the first time Al Jazeera has leapt on climate change as an explanation for a major disaster, when other, potentially more plausible explanations are available. Back in 2015, Al Jazeera published an article blaming climate change for the flooding of the River Nile, and severe flooding in the city of Alexandria, though on that occasion Al Jazeera mentioned some locals blamed the flooding of Alexandria on incompetent drain maintenance rather than climate change.
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