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APHARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - President Robert Mugabe declared Thursday that there was «no cholera» in Zimbabwe and the country's health crisis was over, even as the United Nations raised the death toll from the epidemic to 783.
Cholera has spread rapidly in the southern African nation because of the country's crumbling health care system and the lack of clean water. The U.N. said 16,403 cases have been reported. Last week, Zimbabwe declared a health emergency because of cholera and the collapse of its health services. South African authorities have declared the cholera-hit border region with Zimbabwe a disaster area as the disease spreads to other countries.
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Mugabe lashed out at critics who have been calling for his ouster, «So now that there is no cholera, there is no cause for war anymore,» he said during an hour-long address broadcast live on state television.
The U.S. ambassador to Harare, James McGee, told reporters at the State Department that the cholera problem is getting worse and that Mugabe's assertion that the health crisis was over showed «how out of touch he is with the reality» in Zimbabwe.
«The situation is truly grim,» McGee said, «One man and his cronies are holding this country hostage.
Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch-Brown also rejected Mugabe's claim that there was no longer a crisis in Zimbabwe. «I don't know what world he is living in,» Malloch-Brown said during a one-day trip to South Africa, where he visited a Johannesburg church housing 1,600 Zimbabweans who have fled the country.
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