Health minister calls for better hygiene in rainy season

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Health minister calls for better hygiene in rainy season

11:51 CAT | 28 Nov 2018

Photos: Courtesy of Samarate Chembene / Facebook

Mozambican Health Minister Nazira Abdula on Monday called on all citizens to show additional commitment to improving sanitation and observing individual and collective hygiene measures, particularly during the rainy season, since this is the time of year most prone to outbreaks of disease.

Speaking in Maputo at a ceremony where the health authorities received from the contractor a health centre in the Alto Mae neighbourhood, which has undergone rehabilitation, Abdula said “In this period, there is a greater risk of the appearance or worsening of diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, malaria, high blood pressure due to the intense head, and food poisoning”.

With the increased disease burden, the demand for health services also increases, she added, and consequently there is a greater flow of patients to the health units. “This can increase waiting times, and so we are calling for calm and collaboration from all of us”, Abdula said.

The rainy season begins in October and runs through to the end of March. Abdula urged citizens to take preventive measures such as sleeping under mosquito nets, and placing nets io doors and windows to prevent mosquitoes from entering houses. They should also eliminate potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes. These could include stagnant pools, patches of tall grass around homes, and all objects that might contain water – such as used cans and bottles, and old tyres. These could all become breeding grounds for the anopheles mosquito that spreads malaria, she warned.

The Minister said that the rehabilitation of the Alto Mae health centre expressed the efforts of the Health Ministry and its partners to improve access “to good quality and humanised health services”.

She expressed the government’s recognition of the active participation of its cooperation partners “in efforts to reduce suffering and for the support they have given in financing the actions programmed in the government’s Economic and Social Plan for this year, and for other health programmes in Mozambique.

Abdula called on the cooperation partners, and on other participants and guests at the ceremony for greater involvement in mobilising resources for similar interventions in other health units.

Source: AIM