Mozambique to start cholera vaccinations next week after cyclone
28/03/2019 10:23
* More than 700 people killed by cyclone, floods
* Cyclone badly damaged water, sanitation infrastructure
* Mozambique to begin cholera vaccination campaign
By Stephen Eisenhammer
BEIRA, Mozambique, March 28 (Reuters) - Mozambique will
start a cholera vaccination campaign next week in areas ravaged
by Cyclone Idai, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on
Thursday, after five confirmed cases were detected.
Thousands of people were trapped for more than a week in
submerged villages without access to clean water after Cyclone
Idai smashed into the Mozambican port city of Beira on March 14,
causing catastrophic flooding and killing more than 700 people
across three countries in southeast Africa.
With tens of thousands of displaced people moved to
makeshift camps, relief efforts have increasingly focused on
containing outbreaks of waterborne and infectious diseases.
David Wightwick, a senior member of the WHO's response team
in Beira, told reporters that seven clinics had been set up in
Mozambique to treat cholera patients and that two more would be
ready soon.
"We have 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccines which are
coming in on Monday, and we will start a vaccination campaign as
soon as possible next week," Wightwick said.
Cholera is endemic to Mozambique, which has had regular
outbreaks over the past five years. About 2,000 people were
infected in the last outbreak, which ended in February 2018,
according to the WHO.
But the scale of the damage to Beira's water and sanitation
infrastructure, coupled with its dense population, have raised
fears that another epidemic would be difficult to put down.
Wightwick could not confirm whether there had yet been any
deaths from cholera in Mozambique.
A Reuters reporter saw the body of a dead child being
brought out of an emergency clinic in Beira on Wednesday. The
child had suffered acute diarrhoea, which can be a symptom of
cholera. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N21E1X4
In nearby Malawi, which was badly hit by flooding and heavy
rains in the leadup to Cyclone Idai, the government said arable
and livestock farming had been badly affected and that
irrigation infrastructure had been damaged.
Agriculture ministry spokesman Hamilton Chimala said around
420,000 metric tonnes of maize had been lost, representing
roughly 12 percent of the country's forecast output of 3.3
million metric tonnes in the 2018/19 farming season.
Impoverished Malawi is regularly hit by food shortages, so
the damage to the country's staple grain is a cause for concern.
Zimbabwe's Local Government Minister July Moyo said on
Wednesday the government would spend another $18 million to deal
with the aftermath of the cyclone.
As of Wednesday, 713 people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and
Malawi had died in the tropical storm and in the heavy rains
before it hit. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N21E7C3
(Reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer in Beira, Frank Phiri in
Blantyre, MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare and Stephanie
Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva
Writing by Alexander Winning
Editing by Gareth Jones)
((alexander.winning@tr.com; +27 11 595 2801;))