According to the recent article, “Malawi: Cholera in a Time
of Floods”, many people of the Nsanje and Chikhwawa on Malawi’s border are
facing extremely harsh health conditions. Aside from the devastating flood
disaster that they have just undergone, now the people are at risk at catching
the cholera disease. As a result of the cholera outbreak, there has been one casualty
and 103 people found to be infected with the disease.
Meanwhile, government
officials have attributed the cholera outbreak to declining sanitation
conditions caused by the floods. In addition, the main cause of the sanitation
decline was due to sewage contaminating the water sources including boreholes
and dug-out wells which escalating the incidents in the district. Many families
were using these boreholes and dug-out wells, rivers and streams for household
chores, because they did not have access to taps in most villages. In addition,
due to the flooding disaster many families were living in camps which were created
for flood victims set up by the government.
Furthermore, these camps became
overcrowded and people were living in very unhygienic conditions. Incidentally,
this situation has helped to spread diseases such as cholera. Also, many people
are forced to share rooms at the camps. For instance, one family may share a
room with a total of 21 other people with access to only one toilet. With the
limited use of the toilet, people resorted to using the restroom outside in the
bushes. In other words those people were only making the situation worse. Meanwhile, the government has attempted to
help the situations for both the flooding and the spreading of the diseases,
but there is only so much they can do to prevent those things from happening.
In conclusion, this situation is a great example of a social problem,
in such that the one problem of flooding in an area causes diseases to spread
globally around the world. As a result, it causes great harm and danger to many
individuals. For the most part the government is trying to prevent such things
from happing but also not enough people are taking preventive measures to
reduce the risk of catching and spreading diseases. Hence, there actions bring
harm and danger to many people and even death. Clearly, people need to improve
their own living situations if possible, to save other people from catching
deadly diseases.
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