By Alufisha Fischer
At dawn in Chilomoni’s Mulunguzi area, women and children line the banks of Muluda River, dipping plastic pails into murky water they know could make them sick or kill them. With cholera stalking Blantyre’s high-density townships, the river has become both a lifeline and a threat.
This was laid bare during a visit by Blantyre District Director of Sanitation and Health Services, Dr Gift Kawalazira, who found residents still relying on untreated river water for drinking and domestic use, despite an active cholera outbreak. This is a township already struggling with overcrowding and poverty, and access to safe water remains out of reach for many.
For Alinafe Khamula, a mother of five from Mulunguzi under Village Head Chibwana, the choice is cruelly simple. “We have MASAF water points, but they are few and expensive,” she said. A 20-litre pail costs K200, an amount she says her family cannot afford every day.
Health officials warn that such choices are fuelling the outbreak. Dr Kawalazira said the continued dependence on river water exposes serious gaps in access to safe drinking water, and these are gaps that undermine efforts to contain cholera, even as vaccination campaigns roll out. The District Health Office has distributed chlorine to households that draw water from Muluda River, but officials admit this is only a temporary shield.
For residents, the water status is a drink and pray situation. They say chlorine often arrives only when an outbreak has already begun. “When there is no cholera, we are forgotten,” Khamula said.
Health advocate Maziko Matemba fears that without affordable, reliable, clean water in high-density urban areas, cholera will continue to return.
“The continued unavailability of affordable and clean water in the country’s cities undermines the effort of eliminating the recurrence of water-borne diseases such as Cholera,” Matemba lamented.
Nearly half of all cholera cases recorded in Blantyre are from Chilomoni, making it the district’s epicentre. As of Friday, 23 January 2026, Malawi had recorded 42 cholera cases nationwide. 24 of them in Blantyre, with two deaths, one in Chilomoni. The numbers revive painful memories of the country’s worst cholera outbreak between 2022 and 2024, when more than 59,000 people were infected and at least 1,700 died.
