Today inflation is again rearing its head and cholera has spread across all of the country’s 10 provinces, mainly affecting children, often left unsupervised in the stifling heat as their parents try to work.
Social media is full of cholera information alerts, though a comment earlier this month on the health ministry’s Facebook page from a resident in the southern city of Bulawayo summed up the predicament for most: "How can we wash our hands?
As recently as last week, Harare pharmacist Panashe Chawana, 26, told me he was seeing between two and three patients each day for cholera medication - children and adults, all showing the classic symptoms of the runs and a desperate lack of energy.
A few days ago the World Health Organization’s emergencies director Mike Ryan called cholera “a poster child of poverty, social injustice, climate change and conflict”.
Sewage management is also to blame, with Mr Shumba noting that industrial waste and effluent are continually being discharged into the tributaries and streams feeding Lake Chivero, which provides the main water supply for Harare.
With the heavens set to open for the seasonal rains, many fear the dirt and filth accumulated over months mean cholera, which lurks in shallow pools of water, will prove difficult to defeat.
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