ActionAid is stepping up its cholera prevention campaign in Zimbabwe after finding that shortages of basic supplies such as salt, sugar and bleach are hampering the fight against the disease.

As deaths top 2200, ActionAid plans to spend a total of £1 million on cholera prevention.

Tsitsi Choruma, director of ActionAid Zimbabwe, said: "ActionAid's response to the cholera epidemic has concentrated on awareness and prevention. In the communities where we work, awareness has improved, but there is still a desperate shortage of basic supplies which would help people to practise good hygiene.

"We have distributed hygiene kits consisting of soap, cotton wool and a jerry can to 1000 households, and water purifying tablets to nearly 20,000 households. Funds are now urgently needed to supply more hygiene kits and aqua tablets, while continuing our awareness work."

Communities in the capital Harare and surrounding townships are living with burst sewers, failing water supplies, and uncollected rubbish. ActionAid staff and partners report chronic water shortages in Tafara and Mabvuku.

Most boreholes are not working and people in the two townships are relying on unprotected wells. In Mufakose, foodstuffs including fresh fish were being sold close to flowing sewage.

Local shops are selling water sterilising tablets for foreign currency. Residents who have only Zimbabwean dollars are unable to buy them.

Other households are unable to use the tablets because they do not have a suitable 20-25 litre container.

“Shops are putting US dollar prices on sugar and salt, ingredients of the oral rehydration mixture which is a life-saving treatment for serious diarrhoea,” Ms Choruma said.

“Bleach and disinfectants are scarce. Often people have no way to disinfect a motor vehicle or wheelbarrow that has been used to transport a cholera patient.

“When a patient dies, many households struggle to pay for a coffin.”

Since cholera broke out in Zimbabwe in August 2008 there have been more than 40,000 cases and 2200 deaths. The number of reported cases and deaths continues to rise steadily, with no sign that the epidemic is under control.

The rainy season is now underway and the cholera hazard will increase as refuse and sewage are washed into watercourses. Working with the local authorities, ActionAid has begun a series of cleanup operations in urban areas.

Make a donation to ActionAid's Zimbabwe crisis appeal.