The health authorities of Nampula province in northern Mozambique on Friday declared a cholera outbreak in Nacala Porto district, with one death recorded, an official source announced.
“At this moment the district of Nacala Porto is with a cholera outbreak. We have 32 patients hospitalised” at the Hospital Geral de Nacala Porto, Celma Xavier, provincial chief medical officer, told the media in Nampula.
Nampula province has registered one death due to cholera and has a total of 157 cases which have been registered for a fortnight, said Celma Xavier, adding that the Hospital Geral de Nacala Porto receives, on average, 15 patients per day.
According to Xavier, “rapid response teams have been activated and tents have been set up in the hospital” to deal with the disease.
As well as Nacala Porto, the authorities are on alert in the districts of Malema, Murrupula, Moma and Liúpo due to the “increase in cases of diarrhoea” registered in those districts, the chief medical officer said.
At least 1.2 million people have been vaccinated against the disease in the provinces of Zambezia, Manica and Sofala, in the centre of the country, which is 100 percent of the target, the Ministry of Health (Misau) said.
A total of 111 people have died and another 16,374 have been hospitalised due to cholera since September 2022 in Mozambique, according to the latest Misau figures.
Mozambique has recorded a cumulative of 24,516 cases of the disease since September, 441 of which were registered in the last 24 hours, the update from the National Directorate of Public Health said.
The provinces of Niassa, Tete, Sofala and Zambézia are among the most affected by the disease, whose lethality rate is 0.4 percent, according to health data.
The African Union (AU) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) today called for “support” from the international community to combat cholera outbreaks in Mozambique and Malawi, recently aggravated by the impacts of tropical cyclone Freddy.
“The health and social infrastructure of Mozambique and Malawi has been damaged. We call on all those who have the capacity to help to cooperate with these countries to restore normalcy,” Africa CDC acting director Ahmed Ogwell said in an online press conference.
“Responses [in these two African nations] require a humanitarian approach,” added Ogwell, who stressed the need to ensure clean water supplies, proper human waste disposal and inter-regional communications, among other urgent measures.
Cholera is a disease that causes severe diarrhoea, which is treatable, but can cause death from dehydration if not promptly tackled – and is caused largely by ingesting food and water contaminated by lack of sanitation networks.
Mozambique, considered one of the countries most severely affected by climate change in the world, is in the middle of a rainy and cyclonic season, which occurs between the months of October and April, with winds coming from the Indian Ocean and floods originating in the southern African basins.
