For years, residents of Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare and its surrounding suburbs have experienced recurrent outbreaks of waterborne diseases like typhoid and cholera due to bacterial contamination of local water sources. “People used to fetch water from unprotected wells,” said Precious Kapesa, a resident of Stoneridge suburb. ”They often had diarrheal diseases and some died […] as a result of drinking unclean water.”
Since 2015, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has led an environmental health program to prevent future disease outbreaks by improving access to clean water in the area. MSF teams have rehabilitated and upgraded boreholes to better protect water at the source, and drilled new boreholes to reach fresh water supplies.
