From the UN News Center

The death toll from Zimbabwe's worst-ever cholera outbreak is approaching 1,000, the United Nations reported today, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the country's leadership is not doing enough to address the dire situation in the Southern African nation.

"We continue to witness a failure of the leadership in Zimbabwe to address the political, economic, human rights and humanitarian crisis that is confronting the country and to do what is best for the people of Zimbabwe," Mr. Ban told a closed-door session of the Security Council.

The UN said today the number of suspected cholera cases has risen to 18, 413 with 978 deaths. The outbreak is now affecting nine out of ten provinces in the country and spilling across borders into South Africa, Botswana, and Mozambique.

About half of all cases in Zimbabwe are in one suburb of the capital, Harare, and another 26 per cent in a town on the border with South Africa.

UK Foreign minister David Miliband addressed reporters outside the council yesterday and called the situation in Zimbabwe unbearable. "The disease that has the headlines is cholera," he said. "But the disease at the heart of Zimbabwe..is misrule and corruption." Watch.