![[Tanzania] Vegetable vendors in Dar es Salaam, part of the informal economy that the country relies on, but remains largely unrecognised, 18 September 2003.](https://assets.thenewhumanitarian.org/s3fs-public/styles/responsive_large_2x/public/images/20039186.jpg.webp?itok=rtLg47ZW "Vegetable vendor in Dar es Salaam, part of the informal economy that the country relies on, but remains largely unrecognised.")
Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Lowassa has given Dar es Salaam regional administrative officials two weeks to eradicate cholera or lose their jobs.
"I give you up to December 3," he told the officials on Monday during a brief health inspection of the city's cholera-infected neighbourhoods of Temeke, Buguruni and Mburahati.
Over the past 12 months, the disease has killed 117 people in the city, the nation's commercial capital.
Cholera, a severe diarrhoeal disease caused by infection of the small intestine of humans with vibrio cholerae bacteria, has frequently broken out in the past three decades in Dar es Salaam and other parts of the country.
Health officials say cholera is transmitted via the faecal-oral route and blame its almost endemic prevalence in the country on poor public hygiene standards and the lack of individual precautions such as boiling drinking water.
Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner Abbas Kandoro had earlier told Lowassa that from 12 December 2005 to 20 November 2006, 11,227 people had contracted the disease in the region, of whom 117 died.
Kandoro said strict surveillance of the city's restaurants, hotels and bars would be undertaken. Furthermore, he said, the cultivation of vegetables within city limits, where farmers used suspected toxic water, would be banned. Vegetables were being planted in conduits for domestic sewers and industrial effluent that run into the sea.
Three years ago, researchers from the Tanzania National Environmental Management Council reported widespread deposits of fresh faeces along the Msimbazi Valley, a popular source of green vegetables.
However, vegetable growers told IRIN on Wednesday that they had appealed to the Dar es Salaam authorities to provide them with modern wells to irrigate the area, rather than evicting them.
"I don't believe that spinach grown here spreads cholera because it is cooked before it is eaten. People in this city don't eat raw vegetables," Jumanne Mkoba, a vegetable farmer, said.
In Tanzania's northern city of Arusha, the government has banned the sale of street food and serving of meals at funerals and weddings in a bid to combat the spread of cholera.
"We want to control the disease before it causes many deaths as is the case now with Dar es Salaam," Solomon Ole Legirunare, the Arusha City Medical Officer, said on Wednesday.
jku/oss/mw
"I give you up to December 3," he told the officials on Monday during a brief health inspection of the city's cholera-infected neighbourhoods of Temeke, Buguruni and Mburahati.
Over the past 12 months, the disease has killed 117 people in the city, the nation's commercial capital.
Cholera, a severe diarrhoeal disease caused by infection of the small intestine of humans with vibrio cholerae bacteria, has frequently broken out in the past three decades in Dar es Salaam and other parts of the country.
Health officials say cholera is transmitted via the faecal-oral route and blame its almost endemic prevalence in the country on poor public hygiene standards and the lack of individual precautions such as boiling drinking water.
Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner Abbas Kandoro had earlier told Lowassa that from 12 December 2005 to 20 November 2006, 11,227 people had contracted the disease in the region, of whom 117 died.
Kandoro said strict surveillance of the city's restaurants, hotels and bars would be undertaken. Furthermore, he said, the cultivation of vegetables within city limits, where farmers used suspected toxic water, would be banned. Vegetables were being planted in conduits for domestic sewers and industrial effluent that run into the sea.
Three years ago, researchers from the Tanzania National Environmental Management Council reported widespread deposits of fresh faeces along the Msimbazi Valley, a popular source of green vegetables.
However, vegetable growers told IRIN on Wednesday that they had appealed to the Dar es Salaam authorities to provide them with modern wells to irrigate the area, rather than evicting them.
"I don't believe that spinach grown here spreads cholera because it is cooked before it is eaten. People in this city don't eat raw vegetables," Jumanne Mkoba, a vegetable farmer, said.
In Tanzania's northern city of Arusha, the government has banned the sale of street food and serving of meals at funerals and weddings in a bid to combat the spread of cholera.
"We want to control the disease before it causes many deaths as is the case now with Dar es Salaam," Solomon Ole Legirunare, the Arusha City Medical Officer, said on Wednesday.
jku/oss/mw
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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