Zimbabwe Declares Cholera Emergency

Zimbabwe has declared a national health emergency days after playing down an escalating cholera outbreak that has already claimed more than 500 lives. The move appeared aimed at winning aid from countries and organizations that have been isolating Robert Mugabe's regime.

Britain joined the EU and other international organizations in immediately pledging assistance. Gordon Brown said the UK was helping because the cholera outbreak showed that Zimbabwe was a failed state with a government unable to protect its citizens from disease.

Officially, more than 560 people have died from cholera and about 12,000 have been infected after an outbreak triggered by years of neglect of water systems, resulting in open sewage running through some townships. Nearly half the deaths have been recorded in the capital, Harare. Doctors believe many more in rural areas have not been recorded.

The World Health Organization said the fatality rate - 4.5% of those contracting cholera - was more than four times greater than it normally is when managed with rehydration salts and medicines.

The epidemic has spilled over to South Africa, and the government there said it would hold an urgent meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, where millions of people are also facing severe food shortages, a teetering health system and rampant hyperinflation.

"There are very clear signs ... people are beginning to die of starvation. South Africa and SADC [the Southern African Development Community] can't just fold our arms," said a government spokesman, Themba Maseko.

However, Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga, told the BBC that intervention should mean removing Mugabe from office. "Powersharing is dead in Zimbabwe and will not work with a dictator who does not really believe in powersharing. It's time for African governments to take decisive action to push him out of power."

The chairman of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, Douglass Gwatidzo, said the state of emergency was overdue: "They should have done that two or three weeks ago when the figures of cholera-related deaths were still low. However, it's better late than never."

The European commission has pledged more than $12m (£8m) to contain the outbreak. The International Red Cross and WHO are supplying drugs.

In a statement released by Downing Street, Brown said: "The international community's differences with Mugabe will not prevent us [helping]. We are increasing our development aid, and calling on others to follow suit. For once we agree with the government of Zimbabwe: this is a national emergency."

The state-run Herald newspaper quoted Zimbabwe's health minister, David Parirenyatwa, as appealing for help to get the main hospitals working again after staff stopped coming to work because their pay did not cover the cost of transport.

However Zimbabwe's economy continued its collapse under the weight of hyperinflation, which is officially put at 231m percent but is said by economists to be much higher.

The Zimbabwe dollar lost more than 60% of its value yesterday after the limit on cash withdrawals from bank accounts was officially raised to Z$100m. The expected flood of scarce cash on to the streets saw the value of a new Z$100m drop from £33 to £10 in minutes.

Long snaking lines formed outside banks long before opening time. Thousands of people waited patiently, but by the end of the day many had still not got their money.