Engineering in the time of cholera: overcoming institutional and political challenges to rebuild Zimbabwe's water and sanitation infrastructure in the aftermath of the 2008 cholera epidemic
A devastating cholera epidemic swept Zimbabwe in 2008, causing over 90,000 cases, and leaving more than 4,000 dead. The epidemic raged predominantly in urban areas, and the cause could be traced to the slow deterioration of Zimbabwe's water and sewerage utilities during the economic and political crisis that had gripped the country since the late 1990s. Rapid improvement was needed if the country was to avoid another cholera outbreak. In this context, donors, development agencies and government departments joined forces to work in a unique partnership, and to implement a programme of swift improvements that went beyond emergency humanitarian aid but did not require the time or massive investment associated with full-scale urban rehabilitation. The interventions ranged from supply of water treatment chemicals and sewer rods to advocacy and policy advice. The authors analyse the factors that made the programme effective and the challenges that partners faced. The case of Zimbabwe offers valuable lessons for other countries transitioning from emergency to development, and particularly those that need to take rapid action to upgrade failing urban systems. It illustrates that there is a ‘middle path’ between short-term humanitarian aid delivered in urban areas and large-scale urban rehabilitation, which can provide timely and highly effective results.
Community health clubs growth monitoring: experience from Zimbabwe’s Small Towns WASH Programme
The Government of Zimbabwe and UNICEF are implementing a Small Towns WASH Programme in 14 small urban towns of Zimbabwe. Hygiene Promotion is one of the key programme components and activities are being delivered through community, school and market health clubs. An adaptation of a tool, known as the Group Maturity Index for tracking the development and growth of the health clubs by measuring progress of the clubs across five domains of objectives, governance, systems, resourcing and impact has been developed; two assessments of clubs have been done in October 2015 and May 2016 respectively. This paper compares the results of the two assessments and looks at the usefulness of the tool for programming. It provides a basis for development workers to adapt and obtain an objective means of tracking areas of weakness and strengths when working with health clubs and community based groups.
Cholera - are we containing the crisis?
The last few months have witnessed a massive cholera epidemic in KwaZulu-Natal province. Also, cholera has recently been reported in Mpumalanga North-West, Gauteng and Western 
Cape provinces. In the Northern province, an unusual number of patients with diarrhoeal disease have been reported, and at least one death confirmed as due to cholera at autopsy.