JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — A group of doctors said yesterday that President Robert Mugabe's government is to blame for a cholera epidemic sweeping Zimbabwe and that the disease's spread there is being dramatically under-reported.

About 160 people have died of cholera in Zimbabwe in recent weeks, independent aid organizations say. The lack of clean water and poorly maintained sewage systems have allowed the waterborne intestinal disease to thrive.

And as the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe deepens, most hospitals have been forced to close their doors as they can no longer afford drugs, equipment or to pay their staff.

"This cholera epidemic is manmade," Dr. Douglas Gwatidza, head of the Zimbabwean Association of Doctors for Human Rights, said in a telephone call with reporters.

He said government programmes to monitor disease outbreaks were in "disarray." Those few health facilities still open were trying to stop the spread of cholera but often at the expense of patients with other diseases.

Gwatidza also said dysentery was becoming increasingly prevalent in a country already suffering from one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics.

Comment from Zimbabwean authorities was not immediately available .

Last Tuesday, riot police prevented health workers in the capital, Harare, from protesting against Zimbabwe's collapsing health care system.

Dr. Primrose Matambanadzo said the government needed to issue an urgent appeal for assistance.

"There is a state of crisis," she said. "We need things functioning at hospitals now."

Aid groups fear the outbreaks will worsen as the rainy season progresses and Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, has warned that 1.4 million people are at risk.

The international aid group World Vision said yesterday that 44 people had died in the Zimbabwean border town of Beitbridge, including one of their staff members.

Beitbridge is one of the regions busiest border crossings and there are concerns that it is already spreading to other countries. South African authorities have responded to the crisis with extra medical personnel and facilities being set up along the border.

Local health officials in Musina on the South African side of the border said two Zimbabweans died of cholera after crossing into the country while 64 patients were treated last weekend, the Star newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the South African Press Association reported that a South African truck driver who travelled from Zimbabwe has been admitted to a Durban hospital, showing symptoms of cholera.

Zimbabwe once had among the best health care systems in sub-Saharan Africa. But the country's economic meltdown has led to chronic shortages of food and gasoline, and daily outages of power and water.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, blames Western sanctions for his country's extreme financial woes. But critics point to corruption and mismanagement under his increasingly autocratic leadership.

Hopes were raised when Mugabe signed a power-sharing arrangement with the opposition in September, but little progress has been made toward setting up a unity government.