VANESSA VICK PHOTOGRAPHY

Angola

The Angolan capital of Luanda has been experiencing its worst ever cholera epidemic. Over 43,000 people have become sick and more than1,600 have died due to the epidemic.

Despite impressive revenues generated from oil and diamonds, there has been virtually no investment in basic services since the 1970’s and only a privileged minority of people living in Luanda have access to running water.
  
Julieta Manuel brings her daughter Joaninha Manuel, 2 year old, to a cholera treatment center.
   
Children play in sewage-clogged creeks.
     
  
Cholera can be fatal within several hours if the patient is not given fluids.
   
The Bengo River dark with grit, its banks strewn with garbage supplies much of the water to slum dwellers.
   
Residents collect water provided by the government from one of just a few free water points in the city that were set up after the epidemic started. The government has been criticized for being slow to react and doing little to try and change the conditions that created the epidemic.
     
  
Much of the city has no drainage system; in heavy rains, the filthy water rises hip-high in some of the poorest dwellings.
   
Cholera has been very rare in industrialized nations for the last 100 years; however, the disease is still common in sub-Saharan Africa.
   
The concrete city, the area comprising the old colonial town and the business and wealthy residential areas, is well serviced and is one of the only areas in Luanda to receive piped water.
     
  
The often-contaminated river water from trucks that roam the slums costs up to 12 cents a gallon — a hefty sum in a nation where two-thirds of the people live on less than $2 a day, and up to 160 times the price paid in better-off neighborhoods with piped water.
   
The population of Luanda has doubled in the last ten years to between 4.5 and 5.5 million people. Most of this growth is concentrated in slums where living conditions are appalling.
  
Neighborhoods are ringed by mountains of garbage.
     
  
Meuri Carvalha, 5, receives treatment at a center set up by Doctors Without Borders.
   
Vieira Boas Muleba, 27, lost his wife when she became sick with cholera and died several days later. He is now left to care for their child alone.