JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe declared Thursday that a cholera epidemic in the southern African nation had been “arrested,” even as the United Nations said deaths from the illness had risen to 783.
In a speech at a funeral for a ruling-party official, Mugabe credited the World Health Organization for helping contain the outbreak in Zimbabwe, which last week declared a national health emer gency.
“Now there is no cholera; there is no cause for war,” Mugabe said, according to news-service reports. “We need doctors, not soldiers.”
Mugabe’s assessment of the outbreak was disputed by health-care organizations, which have flooded the economically devastated country in recent weeks with supplies and personnel.
On Wednesday, the United Nations called for an additional $6 million to tackle cholera, which it said threatens “the well-being of thousands of people.”
Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, told the Bloomberg News that Mugabe’s claim was “clearly madness.”
Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader for 28 years, has faced increasing international pressure in recent days as the cholera crisis has grown.
Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu have called on African nations to use force to depose Mugabe. This week, President George W. Bush, echoing calls by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said it was “time for Robert Mugabe to go.”
Mugabe, who blames Western sanctions for the country’s economic collapse, has accused the West of using the cholera outbreak to plot an invasion.
The outbreak, which health officials attribute to a collapsed sanitation system and a lack of clean water, has sickened more than 16,400 people, according to U.N. figures released Thursday.
On Wednesday, South Africa declared an area along its border with Zimbabwe a disaster area because of an influx of hundreds of Zimbabweans seeking treatment for cholera.
Inflation in Zimbabwe, officially at 231 million percent, is so high that Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank last week began issuing $100 billion notes. The price of a loaf of bread quickly soared to more than $30 million.
Arrests and abductions of dissenters are also on the rise, human-rights organizations say.
