Cholera Corpses Strew the Path of Rwandan Refugees

GOMA, Zaire -- The acrid stench of death filled the air Thursday as hundreds upon hundreds of corpses -- a few here, a dozen a few yards farther, 25 more just beyond -- lined dusty roads and littered the fields of what has become the world's closest vision of hell.


Relief operations for the more than 1 million Rwandan refugees who have flooded this remote Zairian border town focused on the grim task of picking up and burying at least 1,100 men, women and children who have fallen victim in the last 24 hours to what doctors confirmed as a suddenly raging cholera epidemic.


"We've lost the body count," French army First Lieutenant A. Ramasco said wearily at mid-afternoon as he supervised six military trucks that rumbled slowly down the road outside the airport on burial detail. "We're a transport regiment, not morticians."


Up the road, a French front-end loader dug a long trench near a grove of banana trees. Workers tossed body after body into the pit; each tumbled down to join the ghastly jumble of torsos, limbs and rags. There were at least 500 corpses in the mass grave, officials said. Behind them, a bulldozer pushed dirt over the searing Holocaust-like scene.


Perhaps the inner circle of this Dantesque tableau was 6 kilometers north at Munigi. Here, physicians from Medecins Sans Frontieres and other aid groups worked a makeshift triage ward on an open field strewn with jagged rocks and the bodies of the dead and dying.


Doctors predict that the cholera -- which causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and sometimes death within five hours -- is likely to infect between 10,000 and 50,000 refugees. Untreated, half will probably die. "You cannot stop it at the moment," warned Dr. Koenraad Henckaerts of Medecins Sans Frontieres.


Cholera initially spreads in contaminated water, but then can be passed directly from person to person. Corpses are especially contagious, so quick burial is critical. The chief treatment for those infected is immediate rehydration with special solutions to replace lost fluids. And the only reliable prevention is chlorinated drinking water. But both the solutions and clean water are in impossibly short supply.


The first air shipment of 10,000 liters of solution arrived Thursday but most had been used by nightfall. Another shipment was expected Friday, but the airport is already operating at near-capacity.


Refugee "camps" are a misnomer. Hundreds of thousands of people simply squat by the roadside, awaiting their fate. Survivors lead bleating goats and long-horned cattle; a few sell yams and corn by the road. Rwandan soldiers, routed by rebels, strut by in their camouflage uniforms as long lines of people shuffle endlessly down the road.