Is Pierre Nkurunziza playing demonic politics amid Burundi’s severe malaria outbreak?

So far, 126 people have been infected in Burundi by the acute diarrhoeal infection and this has resulted in the fast closing of unhygienic restaurants, bars and eateries in the country's former capital, Bujumbura.

According to Freddy Mbonimpa, the mayor of Bujumbura, the infection has spread by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholera. The disease, if left untreated, can kill the sufferers within hours. He also said that the authorities were veiling those establishments operating in markets and near the roads that were observed to have poor hygiene standards.

Burundi, on the other hand, is also combating with tremendous malaria outbreak with a record of over 1,800 people dead this year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The East African country is unable to recuperate as the outbreak has infected almost half of the total population.

Around 6 million people have been recorded suffering from malaria outbreak since the first week of January to July-end. The spreading of infections reached crisis levels in May. Experts believe that the situation deteriorated as the Burundian government refused to declare an emergency. The country will almost 11 million people has still not been announced national emergency despite the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) constantly insisting the malaria outbreak crossed "epidemic proportions" in May.

"The national malaria outbreak response plan, which is currently being validated, has highlighted a lack of human, logistical and financial resources for effective response. All stakeholders, including the national authorities and partners are called upon to provide the requisite resources to mount a robust response to this event before it escalates," OCHA revealed.

OCHA including other experts have pointed out multiple issues responsible for the crisis, which includes low use of preventative measures and a vulnerable population with low levels of resistance. The experts have also minutely observed an augmentation in drug-resistant strains of malaria in common with other parts of the planet. On the other hand, the climate crisis in Burundi is one of the most contributing factors and the disease-carrying mosquitoes are reaching higher altitudes in the mountainous nations. The experts have also noted their behaviorial changes including more aggressive feeding habits.

Burundi was declared a malaria epidemic country in March 2017, when the nation recorded 1.8 million cases and 700 deaths, but was resisting doing the same in the current year. A senior government official (name withheld) clearly stated that the government did not want to admit weakness with elections set for 2020.

"We are less than a year away from the presidential election. Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza, who is facing many crises, does not want to recognise what could be considered a failure of his health policy," the unnamed official told AFP. Burundi has been in crisis since 2015, when Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term and was re-elected in elections boycotted by most of the opposition. The oppositions are also blaming the Head of State for not announcing national emergency fixing his eye on the election set for 2020.

According to the UN, at least 1,000 people were killed and over 400,000 displaced in violence that was mostly carried out by state security forces under Pierre Nkurunziza's rule.

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