Most families of Harare’s nearly two million residents were surviving on one meal a day and malnutrition is on the rise in the Zimbabwean capital, a city nutritionist said on Tuesday. 

City nutrition specialist Clare Zunguza told Parliament’s special committee on health and child welfare that most families were having only one meal a day due to shortages of food or prohibitive costs when it is available in shops. 

“Most families are not eating anything in the morning and afternoon and only having one meal in the evening hence malnutrition is now prevalent in Harare,” she said. 

Chronic malnutrition had become common among children with at least 30 percent of those under the age of five malnourished, said Zunguza, who called for the introduction of supplementary feeding schemes at primary schools where Grade One pupils were the worst affected by hunger. 

Feeding schemes were currently underway in the low-income suburbs of Hatcliffe, Mabvuku and Tafara, said Zunguza. 

“Shortage of nutrients among pregnant women in high-density suburbs is on the increase resulting in them giving birth to underweight children who are at risk of developing complications and infections,” she said. 

HIV and AIDS patients were not being spared with three quarters of families headed by chronically ill parents reported to be food insecure, Zunguza said, noting that supplementary feeding schemes were often directed at rural populations when communities in those areas could share food unlike in urban areas. 

Once southern Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe has grappled severe food shortages over the past seven years due to persistent drought and a chaotic land reform programme that saw President Robert Mugabe’s government seize white farms, that produced the bulk of the country’s food needs, for redistribution to landless blacks. 

The disclosure of severe food shortages and rising malnutrition in Harare comes hard on the heels of last week’s warning by the United States-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) that up to 40 percent of Zimbabwe’s rural population will need urgent food aid between October and next March to avert starvation. 

FEWSNET warned of massive food insecurity in the south and west of the country as well as in urban areas during the next six months unless the government improved its maize import plan and there is a lot of movement on humanitarian food aid programmes announced recently. 

The cash-strapped Harare government has said it will this year import 400 000 tonnes of maize from Malawi and a further 200 000 tonnes from Tanzania to cover the national shortfall. 

However, a serious shortage of foreign currency is hampering efforts to import food, forcing the Zimbabwean government to resort to barter trade to secure maize supplies from Malawi. 

Responding to a question by committee chairperson Blessing Chebundo on whether there had been any deaths associated with malnutrition recorded in the capital, acting city health director Stanley Mungofa said no such cases had been reported. 

Meanwhile, Mungofa bemoaned shortages of water in Harare and its environs particularly in high-density suburbs saying these were creating a breeding space for disease such as cholera although he claimed no cases had been reported yet. 

Mungofa, a trained medical doctor, said cases of diarrhea were on the increase in high-density suburbs of Budiriro, Glen View and Mufakose due to shortages of water. 

“We have had increases which are above what we normally see,” he said, adding that water and blood diarrhea were common.  

Scabby and other skin conditions were also on the increase in these areas, he said. 

The shortage of food is only an addition on a long list of problems facing Zimbabwe as the country grapples with an economic recession described by the World Bank as the worst in the world outside a war zone. - ZimOnline

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