Agencies
QUELIMANE
Weeks after Cyclone Freddy hit Mozambique, the still-flooded country faces a spiralling cholera outbreak that threatens to add to the devastation. According to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were over 19,000 confirmed cases of cholera across eight provinces as of March 27, which almost doubled in a week.
Freddy was likely the longest-lived cyclone, lasting over five weeks and hitting Mozambique twice. The tropical storm killed 165 people in Mozambique, 17 in Madagascar and 676 in Malawi. At a hospital in Quelimane, Zambezia’s provincial capital, National Institute of Health director-general Eduardo Sam Gudo Jr reported there were 600 new confirmed cases a day in the Quelimane district alone but said that the real number might be as high as 1,000.
At least 31 died of cholera in Zambezia, and over 3,200 were hospitalised between March 15 and 29, according to the health ministry. Cases are highest in the neighbourhood of Icidua on the city outskirts, where most residents live in bamboo or adobe mud huts and fetch water in buckets from communal wells. Flooding brought by the cyclone has exposed many of these wells to water contaminated with sewage overflow and other sources of bacteria. Cholera spreads through faeces, often when it gets into drinking water. But until water pipelines ruptured in the floods are repaired, these wells are the only source of water for those in Icidua and communities like it. For now, temporary solutions offer the only hope of stemming the outbreak. Volunteers go from house to house distributing bottles of Certeza, a local chlorine-based water purifier.
Each bottle should last a family for a week, but supplies run low as local production struggles to meet demand. There are also not enough people to distribute the Certeza, even if greater supplies could be procured, Gudo said. Cases are highest in the neighbourhood of Icidua on the city outskirts, where most residents live in bamboo or adobe mud huts and fetch water in buckets from communal wells.
Flooding exposed many of these wells to contamination with sewage overflow and other sources of bacteria. Cholera spreads through faeces, often when it gets into drinking water. In the meantime, health workers struggle to treat the infected, with many clinics and hospitals badly damaged. “The cyclone destroyed the infrastructure here,” said José da Costa Silva, the clinical director of the Icidua health centre.
