Mozambique: Cholera affecting 10 African countries now more serious than Covid – WHO

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Mozambique: Cholera affecting 10 African countries now more serious than Covid – WHO

8:08 CAT | 27 Jan 2023

File photo: Reuters

The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said on Thursday that the main concern is no longer Covid-19, but the cholera outbreak, which is affecting 10 African countries.

“The threat of the Covid-19 pandemic is receding, we are now more concerned about cholera, which has already spread to 10 countries in Africa, and puts extreme pressure on the limited vaccines that exist globally,” Moeti said during a virtual press conference from Brazzaville.

In total, 20,552 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded on the continent in the first three weeks of January, which is a 97% drop from the figure recorded in the first three weeks of last year, although there was a rise in numbers in South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia, Moeti pointed out, conceding that while the numbers may be higher due to low testing rates, the important thing is that the number of hospitalisations and the number of deaths has decreased to 88, which compares to 9,096 recorded in the same period of 2022.

“For the first time since Covid-19 shook our lives, January is not synonymous with an outbreak, and Africa is embarking on the fourth year of the pandemic with the hope of moving beyond emergency response mode to living with the virus in this new normal,” he said.

At the press conference, WHO further advocated the need to include the Covid-19 vaccine in the normal vaccination plan for African countries.

Cholera is a disease that causes severe diarrhoea, which is treatable, but can cause death from dehydration if not promptly tackled – and is caused largely by ingesting food and water contaminated by poor sanitation.

The cholera epidemic ongoing since March 2022 in Malawi has killed more than 1,000 people, according to the government, and has claimed 16 lives in Mozambique.

“We have a total of 1,376 cases of cholera and 16 deaths, which corresponds to a mortality rate of 1.2 percent,” said Domingos Guiole, of the public health surveillance department in the Ministry of Health (MISAU), quoted on January 16 by private television STV, which led the president of Mozambique himself, Filipe Nyusi, to advocate that hygiene care be “redoubled.”

A total of 20,552 new [#COVID19] cases were recorded in the first 3 weeks of January 2023, a 97% slump compared with the same period last year despite an uptick in cases in #SouthAfrica, #Tunisia and #Zambia over the past 2 weeks https://t.co/aleQAUNm8v

— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) January 26, 2023