HH MUST RESIGN AS ‘GLOBAL CHOLERA CONTROL CHAMPION’ – M’MEMBE
Lusaka, Sunday (January 7, 2024)
(PRESS RELEASE)
SOCIALIST Party President Dr Fred M’membe says the rise in cholera deaths signifies a collapsing healthcare system.
As of Saturday, January 6, 2024, Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) revealed that Cholera had claimed 195 lives out 5071 patients since it broke out in Zambia.
Speaking after he donated chlorine to residents of Lusaka’s Garden Compound, Dr. M’membe said President Hakainde Hichilema who was appointed in May 2022 at the World Health Assembly, in Geneva, Switzerland, as Global Cholera Control Champion, must resign because he is a Champion of failure.
He said the 2024 National Budgets has remained silent on financing the Multi-Sectoral Cholera Elimination Plan which was launched in 2019.
Dr. M’membe said the Parliamentary Committee on Energy, Water Development and Sanitation analysis of the 2024 National Budget noted that as a share of the total budget, the allocation to WASH has dropped from 1.4% in 2023 to 1.3% in 2024, continuing a downward trend that began in 2021.
The SP President said the Government’s decreasing investment in WASH relative to the overall budget and other priorities is inconsistent with its stated goal of improving WASH services.
Dr. M’membe said it was heartbreaking to see people dying helplessly due to excessive congestion in health care facilities.
“What we are seeing now is indicative of a health care system, which is on the verge of collapse,” Dr M’membe said.
“Let Mr. Hichilema come out in the open and admit that he has failed to manage the cholera situation in the country, especially in Lusaka,” he said.
Dr. M’membe said the cholera outbreak has worsened owing to the UPND administration’s failure to heed calls from stakeholders in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector to increase the budgetary allocation, which has been declining yearly.
The SP President said with proper planning and mobilization of resources, the cholera situation would have been contained within a few weeks.
“In 2018, several stakeholders came on board and mobilized resources to help the government manage the cholera situation. So why are we failing to do this now?” he said.
The Opposition Leader has since urged citizens to practice good hygiene such as washing hands with soap, eating warm food, keeping the surroundings clean, and drinking treated or boiled water, and avoid large gatherings where possible.
This is contained in a statement issued by SP Media Director Brian Hapunda.
If he is a president in your house then he can resign now since he is the peoples choice it can never happen and come 2026 we are giving him another term and if possible even beyond.
Fuledi when you confess what you do kumatako and get that lucifer to leave ZCCB alone and then make the senile bishop at ocida go and rest at chainama, maybe just maybe anybody will listen to your barking of HH7 resignation!!!
Fuledi is nothing without HH7 … Kikikiki
His only manifesto is HH7 this, HH7 that, boring indeed!
So what is your plan for Zambia Fuledi apart from your usual plan for Winter?
Please don’t be in a hurry!
HH7 is not going to resign! The earlier you know that, the better!
It’s not HH7’s job to stop cholera!
It is our collective responsibility!
We grew up very poor during KK days but we were very clean people!
Your namesake Fredrick Titus Chiluba FTJ who brought Street Vending in Lusaka, even establishing a Vendor’s Desk. This caused a lot of Rural-urban migration causing congestion in Lusaka shanty Compounds! This historic political blunder created an enabling environment for the mushrooming of unplanned Shanty Compounds!
One way of ending Cholera is to phase out Shanty Compounds! Our people are living in dehumanizing conditions of squalor and Filth!
Munthu asankale so!
It’s not the president who has failed!
We have failed ourselves pa mulamdu wabusali!
Let’s just introduce a special Law enforcement wing to supplement Council police efforts to enforce Public Health Laws!
It’s time to place back Responsibility and Accountability for Cleanliness in the hands of Citizens!
And you must resign because you are the champion of chikala’s
We have now come to know M’membe and Mwamba as over ambitious politicians who think that things are easily done than they are said. If you go to someone’s wife and begin to tell her that your husband has failed to care for you, even if you don’t say anything else, just by using common sense, the woman can easily know what you are up to. Even us, we already know what M’membe and Mwamba are up to if HH resigned today. Objectively and not just praise singing, I want to say that each year, some countries are hit by very devastating diseases like Ebola, Cholera, Covid 19, Dengue Fever etc. We saw the havoc which Ebola caused in three West African countries few years ago, we saw how Covid 19 devastated developed countries like Italy, UK, USA, Brazil, India and so on. If we talk of the health care system, these countries I have mentioned have some of the best health care systems in the world. Being the most hardly hit countries does not mean that their health care systems collapsed or their Presidents failed, no, and even if their presidents of those countries had resigned, it could have solved very little or nothing. When we talk of Cholera, it is one of the most simple or easiest disease to prevent and manage if one is already affected. Cholera gives us headache not only in Zambia but in the SADC region, first it was Zimbabwe, last year it was Malawi and probably that is where it spread from. I don’t have statistics for Zimbabwe but for Malawi. In Malawi, the eight most affected Districts in 2023, Lilongwe being the most affected, had a cumulated total of 42,607 Cholera cases and 1,292 deaths. If the President has to resign every time you have such an outbreak, Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa and Lazarus Chakwera could have resigned a long time ago. So cholera has nothing to do with the President or the Minister, although it needs money and logistics, it is not necessarily triggered by low or high budgetary allocation, Cholera is purely dependent on or is triggered by poor hygienic environment and lack of strict adherence to hygienic rules. Before the rain season, try to visit City market and walk through to Soweto market, you can be shocked with what you see there, you find that drainages are filled with all sorts of things ranging from empty plastic bottles to diapers. You would think, drainages are rubbish pits or waste bins. So how can they serve their purpose because in most cases they are blocked before even the rains come and before any water starts flowing there. We know that if drainages are blocked, automatically some of our residential areas will be flooded, pit latrines causing severe contamination and pollution to water from shallow wells, some of our homes, food outlets and markets. It is very easy for the President or the Minister to resign, but if the situation on the ground remains the same, nothing will change. In the National Budget, you can allocate as much money as possible but it will amount to nothing. As long as people don’t strictly follow the hygienic rules, they will be perpetual victims of Cholera. For example, if one fails to chlorinate or boil drinking water, fails to cover the food and flies land there and taste it for him before he starts eating, if one fails to warm the leftover food, what do think the President or the Minister can do? Or what do you want the President or Minister to do? Unless we change our mind set and start thinking hygienic, we shall remain the potential victims for Cholera.
As a Global Cholera Control Champion, the President has not failed in anything because he is actively playing his role, for example, last year he sank a number of boreholes in various townships in Lusaka because; 1. He knows the value of the safe drinking water. 2. He knows the consequences of lacking safe drinking water and Cholera outbreak is one of them. Then through CDF, the President has directed that each school even in the remotest rural areas should have running water and flashed toilets. And now he has issued a directive to bury all shallow wells in compounds because they are likely to be the major sources of the problem. If all these goals are achieved, diseases like Cholera will be history in Zambia. Hence, instead of calling for his resignation, let us emulate and support the President, he means well for this country. Those who have resources, they can join him in sinking more boreholes while those who have no resources can join the health care workers in disseminating the information through health education. Alternatively, HH is not a stingy person as some people are trying to paint him. With this challenge at hand, if we approach him and ask for more boreholes, I have no doubt in my mind that the response from the President can be very swift even if it means using his own resources just as he has done before. In his recent press briefing, I heard M’membe calling for unity and telling people to work together. The call is more than welcome and in a situation like this one is where we need to work together as citizens because Cholera is not political, it does not choose, it affects everyone regardless of party affiliation. My last words are that, let us avoid playing politics in every issue because Cholera cannot be fought and defeated by the President, Minister or the health care system in place alone, it needs all our concerted efforts as Zambians, to fight and defeat Cholera. If the President has failed, then all of us have failed but I know he has not failed and we have not failed, we can do it because the solution is in our hands. United we stand, divided we fall.
Only a lunatic can choose to politicise the cholera epidemic. By the way why didn’t you ask your pro-marxist colleague Munangagwa to resign when thousands of people died of cholera in Zimbabwe?
An idiot’s prayer: Lord make things difficult in the country so that I yakumbuyo can be president.
Lord’s answer: Iwe kolwe and all your fellow idiots, you once imposed yourselves on innocent and unsuspecting Zambians, while I sat back and watched, you stole, looted, plundered, gassed and murdered innocent souls, do you think I am as stupid as you are to waste my precious time listening to witches and sons of the devil?
Are you stupid? Are you mad? Thunder that should have fired you then, will now fire your generations and generations of your generations to black ashes. STUPID IDIOTS.