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With more than 800 dead and another 6,000 ill, Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe continues to tell the world that Zimbabwe has contained cholera at a time when the United Nations and a UK charity are reporting just the opposite. According to the UN and UK based charity the cholera deadly outbreak was getting worse.

According to Save the Children said: “If anything is certain in the chaos of Zimbabwe today it is that the cholera outbreak is not under control.”

Mugabe is accusing Western of plotting to use cholera as an excuse to invade and overthrow him.

“Now that there is no cholera there is no cause for war,’ he said.

Mr Mugabe spoke as a district in neighbouring South Africa was declared a disaster area because of the spreading disease, which has killed hundreds in Zimbabwe.

In a nationally televised speech, he said: ‘I am happy to say our doctors are being assisted by others and the WHO [World Health Organization] have now arrested cholera.’

He went on to denounce former colonial power Britain, as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President George W Bush, who both called earlier this week for the 84-year-old to resign.

‘Because of cholera, Mr Brown, Mr Sarkozy and Mr Bush want military intervention,’ Mr Mugabe said. He added: ‘Let’s tell them that the cholera cause doesn’t exist any more.’

He was speaking in the capital, Harare, at a state funeral for senior ruling party official Elliot Manyika, who died in a car crash over the weekend.

Shortly after Mr Mugabe spoke, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the toll from the disease had risen slightly overnight to 783 and that 16,403 were believed to have been infected.

But Save the Children in Harare said these figures were an underestimate and the epidemic was almost certainly worsening.

The agency’s Rachel Pounds said on Thursday: ‘Reliable figures are hard to come by, but there is much evidence out there that this crisis is growing, not diminishing.’

She added: ‘With even the most basic healthcare on hand, you would expect to see a death rate of only one or two per cent. In some areas of Zimbabwe a third of those who have contracted the infection are dying.’

The WHO has warned that the total number of cases could reach 60,000 unless the epidemic was stopped.”

Enough is enough, Mugabe must go. The United States, the UK and the UN are not doing enough or working fast enough to rid the world of this animal. Mugabe must go sooner rather than later.

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©December 2008, pumabydesign001.