Zimbabwe Declares National Health Emergency

Women and children collect clean water from a UNICEF truck in Harare, Zimbabwe Wednesday, Dec. 3,...

Women and children collect clean water from a UNICEF truck in Harare, Zimbabwe Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008. The United Nations is reporting that the death toll from the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has risen to 565, with 12,546 people infected. The government had been reporting 473 cholera deaths since August, and a total of 11,700 people infected as of Monday.

(Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP Photo)

Zimbabwe declared a national emergency over a cholera epidemic and the collapse of its health care system, and state media reported Thursday the government is seeking more international help to pay for food and drugs to combat the crisis.

The failure of the southern African nation's health care system is one of the most devastating effects of the country's overall economic collapse.

Facing the highest inflation in the world, Zimbabweans are struggling just to eat and find clean drinking water. The United Nations says the number of suspected cholera cases in Zimbabwe since August has climbed above 12,600, with 570 deaths, because of a lack of water treatment and broken sewage pipes.

Cholera is an infectious intestinal disease that is contracted by consuming contaminated food or water. Its symptoms include severe diarrhea.

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Still, residents are getting little help from the government, which has been paralyzed since disputed March elections as President Robert Mugabe and the opposition wrangle over a power-sharing deal.

"Our central hospitals are literally not functioning," Minister of Health David Parirenyatwa said Wednesday at a meeting of government and international aid officials, according to The state-run Herald newspaper.

International aid agencies and donors must step up their response, Matthew Cochrane, regional spokesman for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

"This is about supporting the people of Zimbabwe," Cochrane said, adding that aid should include water treatment plants and more medical staff.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, long among Mugabe's sharpest critics, agreed that Zimbabwe was facing a national emergency and nations must step in to help.

"Mugabe's failed state is no longer willing or capable of protecting its people," Brown said in a statement Thursday. "The international community's differences with Mugabe will not prevent us doing so — we are increasing our development aid, and calling on others to follow."