(SomaliNet) U.S. Ambassador James McGee said almost 300 people have died of cholera in Zimbabwe as shortages of food and clean drinking water worsen and the country's health system collapses. A report today showed 294 confirmed deaths from the disease, McGee told reporters in Washington via videolink from the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. An additional 1,200 cases of cholera have been confirmed and 2,500 are unconfirmed, he said. "The health system here has totally collapsed," McGee said. "The three major hospitals here in Harare have closed."
McGee said the U.S. may impose additional sanctions to compel President Robert Mugabe to implement a power-sharing agreement reached in September with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. "The political situation has created a concurrent situation on the food and health side of the house that is, frankly, intolerable," McGee said. "I don't see anything that's going to alleviate these problems until the government of Robert Mugabe starts to act in good faith."
State media previously reported that cholera had killed about 127 people in Zimbabwe since the outbreak began last month.
Patients Turned Away .
McGee said doctors and nurses aren't being paid and some clinics in the countryside are turning away patients, McGee said. He traveled through the countryside recently and saw children with the distended bellies suggesting malnutrition. The U.S. is trying to increase food assistance and help provide clean drinking water.
"Cholera is something that is fairly easily treated; you need salt, you need sugar, you need clean water," McGee said. "Unfortunately those are three things that the average Zimbabwean does not have."
Even as inflation in Zimbabwe reached 210 million percent, Mugabe has managed to strengthen his hold on power through political patronage and because military commanders fear potential prosecution should power shift to the opposition, McGee said. "We have additional sanctions that we are prepared to roll out if this political impasse continues," McGee said.
Sanctions so far have had an impact, he said. Political leaders have been forced to withdraw their children from schools in the U.S. or Australia because of sanctions, he said. "I meet with some regularity with one of the top leaders here in Zimbabwe, and he has about $7 million of his funding that's been frozen because of U.S. sanctions against Zimbabwe," McGee said. "He starts out each and every meeting with the same thing -- where is my money? It hurts them."