Diarrhoea deaths, teenagers poisoned

Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent

Gweru City Council has allayed fears of typhoid in Gweru after confirming that the two teenagers from Mkoba 12 who died of diarrhoea last week had succumbed to food poisoning.

Gweru City Mayor, Councillor Josiah Makombe, said a postmortem conducted on the deceased showed that they did not die of typhoid as initially suspected.

“As the local authority we were worried about the safety of residents. So we wanted to establish the cause of death of the two teenagers. We were informed by police that the boys had died of poisoning.

Residents of Gweru were last week jerked into panicking after reports of a suspected typhoid outbreak in the city.

“The situation was also exacerbated by the media reports,” Cllr Makombe said.

Cllr Makombe said stool samples from Government laboratories have also confirmed that there is no typhoid in the area.

He said Gweru water has also been certified clean.

“After we got the report that there was a diarrhoea outbreak and two people had died, we immediately took our water for testing and it was declared safe for drinking,” he said.