For the past five months a wide outbreak of cholera has spread throughout Zimbabwe. With the country going through Mugabe's political turmoil, not much attention has been drawn to the safety of Zimbabweans. According to The Guardian, Mugabe himself publicly declared that Zimbabwe is "cholera-free" even though death tolls have risen to 1,780 as of January 2009. Since August of last year, the number of suspected cases has risen to 36,000 and will continue to increase as Zimbabwe's rainy season is in full bloom. Cholera is an infectious bacterial disease that normally spreads through contaminated water. The bacteria (vibrio cholerae) manifests in the intestines, and after a period of time, causes symptoms that include severe diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, muscle cramps, dehydration, and shock.
Little children all over the metropolitan Washington D.C. area will go to school this morning, and most will enjoy a drink at many of the water fountains of their schools at least once in the day. Others will take a more adventurous route and drink straight from the taps in the school water. Lately, however, parents of D.C. Public School students as well as school officials have been questioning the safety of the tap water running through the school systems, due to reports that have surfaced over the past few years which have pointed to elevated levels of lead, a dangerously toxic heavy metal, in the tap water. In 2007, the rumors grew so widespread that D.C.P.S. (DC Public School) officials stepped in and replaced many of the water coolers in “lead hotspots” in the city. However, there was not enough money left in the budget to coordinate and redraw samples to test for lead inside the new coolers. This left a cloud of doubt over the safety of the tap water of our city’s public schools. So, early this summer, 5 WIS students heard about the problem, and with the help of several dedicated community safety experts as well as a team of researchers at Virginia Tech University, decided to take matters in to their own hands.
