Mozambique: Cholera infects almost 1,000 in Nampula province since October

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Mozambique: Cholera infects almost 1,000 in Nampula province since October

4:18 CAT | 13 Mar 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: AA]

The cholera outbreak in the Mozambican province of Nampula has caused almost a thousand people to become infected since October, with nearly 400 new cases since the end of February, as well as 30 deaths, according to official figures.

According to the health authorities, the province, in northern Mozambique, had 579 accumulated cases from October to the end of February, with 29 deaths, in three districts, a figure that this week has grown to an accumulated 929 infected and one more death.

In an assessment made by the national institute for disaster risk management and reduction (INGD), with data up to 11 March, in view of the consequences of this week’s passage of tropical cyclone Jude through Nampula province, it is stated that the cholera outbreak is now active locally in Mogovolas, Nampula city, Murrupula and Larde.

“Risk factors include poor water supply coverage, poor sanitation, non-compliance with basic individual and collective hygiene measures, and misinformation about the disease,” reads the same report, which adds that the health sector in Nampula, as well as the government and partners, is “developing actions to contain the spread of the outbreak”.

About a week ago, the health authorities in Nampula province expressed concern at the level of misinformation about cholera, an outbreak that has been affecting the province since 2024, following the vandalisation of yet another treatment centre for the disease.

“We had our cholera treatment centre [in the Murrupula district] vandalised, fortunately they didn’t vandalise the tents (…), but what has us most worried is the level of misinformation we have at district level,” the district health director in Murrupula, Énia Zunguza, said on March 7.

The cholera outbreak was declared on 17 October in three regions of the provinces of Nampula and the province of Zambézia.

According to the sector representative, health professionals are forbidden to go to the communities, which creates insecurity among the community and prevents the treatment of the disease.

“Nobody is safe because the information circulating in the communities is that the health services are the ones spreading this cholera, which is not true,” she said.

The Nampula health authorities had already conceded in February that myths and misinformation jeopardise the cholera vaccination target in Mogovolas, among the most affected districts in that northern province.

The authorities aimed to reach 197,999 people, but ended up vaccinating 169,865, which corresponds to 85.8 %, Samuel Carlos, a representative of the Provincial Health Service in Nampula, told Lusa at the time.

Due to the wave of misinformation, with communities accusing health workers on the ground of spreading the disease, people in Mogovolas destroyed the Cholera Treatment Centre, as well as the operating theatre of the government’s strategic partner, the non-governmental organisation Médecins Sans Frontières.

Source: Lusa