Cholera spreads to Nampula – Watch

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Cholera spreads to Nampula – Watch

7:15 CAT | 28 Feb 2020

Photo: Miramar

Over the past two weeks, 349 people have been diagnosed with cholera in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula, one of whom has died from the disease.

Announcing the outbreak at a press conference in Nampula city on Thursday morning, the provincial chief doctor, Sulaimana Isidoro, said cholera had been diagnosed in four of the province’s 23 districts.

The death occurred in Nametil, in Mogovolas district. Cases were also detected in Memba, Nacala-a-Velha and Nampula city.

Isidoro said that, in the previous 24 hours, 13 patients had entered the four cholera treatment centres, where 29 people were already hospitalised. “In cumulative terms, we have recorded 349 cases of cholera in the four districts I mentioned”, he added.

A further four districts – Monapo, Larde, Meconta and Ribaue – are suffering from outbreaks of severe diarrhoea, but laboratory tests have shown that this is not caused by the cholera bacterium. In these districts, 128 patients have been treated for diarrhoea and currently 49 are hospitalised.

Iisidoro said that, in the first six weeks of this year, 321,598 cases of malaria have been diagnosed in the province, which is a decline of 7.4 per cent, compared with the 347,337 cases recorded in the same period of 2019.

There were 13 deaths from malaria, which compares with 26 deaths in the first six weeks of last year – a reduction of 50 per cent.

Isidoro believed that the actions carried out by the health ministry have contributed to the reduction in malaria cases and deaths, including house to house campaigns to spray insecticide, and the distribution of four million mosquito nets last year.

As for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan, to date there have been no cases in Nampula.

“We have screened 844 people, 175 of whom had travelled from China”, said Isidoro. Seven Chinese had been quarantined, but so far none have tested positive for the coronavirus. These Chinese citizens all work for the company paving the road from Nampula City to Nametil.