Mozambique: Health Ministry warns against discrimination – Watch

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Mozambique: Health Ministry warns against discrimination – Watch

8:59 CAT | 01 Jun 2020

Photo: INS

The Mozambican Health Ministry is concerned at the appearance of cases of stigma and discrimination against people infected with the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

Speaking in Maputo on Saturday at the Ministry’s daily press conference on the Covid-19 situation, the National Director of Public Health, Rosa Marlene, warned that discrimination could evolve into physical violence against people suspected of carrying the disease.

There have been reports from the central city of Beira of anonymous threats to kill people infected with Covid-19. Marlene feared that such attitudes could compromise the efforts to fight against the spread of the disease.

The danger of discrimination has led the Ministry to restrict to the minimum the amount of information released about people who have tested positive for the corona virus, in order not to put their physical safety at risk, and to avoid situations of social panic.

Marlene said the Ministry will not give details about the health units where Covid-19 patients have been diagnosed, or where they are hospitalized. Data on positive cases, she stressed, will only be shared in aggregate form, and never individually “thus safeguarding the privacy of people infected by Covid-19”.

“This principle”, she said, “seeks to guarantee continued transparency in information on the development of the pandemic in our country, and to help prevent discrimination and violence”.

Marlene announced that, over the previous 24 hours, 260 people were tested for Covid-19. 51 of the samples came from Maputo city, 49 from Nampula, 44 from Sofala, 43 from Inhambane, 40 from Cabo Delgado, 19 from Maputo province and 14 from Gaza.

250 of those tested were negative, but the other ten tested positive for Covid-19, pushing up to 244 the number of positive cases diagnosed since the pandemic began.

All ten new cases are Mozambican citizens. Five are asymptomatic, while the other five display mild to moderate symptoms of the disease.

Five are from Palma district, in Cabo Delgado. Marlene said they are all contacts of a person diagnosed as positive earlier in the month. They are all men, aged between 15 and 59.

Two other positive cases were diagnosed in Nampula city. One is a boy in the 5-14 year age group, while the other, a man in the 35-44 age bracket, is a contact of a previously diagnosed case.

The other three new cases were diagnosed in Maputo City. One is a boy under five years of age and two are women, aged between 25 and 44.

Following the Health Ministry’s guidelines, the ten new cases are all in home isolation, and health staff are tracing their contacts.

Marlene also announced that a further six Covid-19 patients, four Mozambicans and two foreigners, have made a complete recovery, bringing the number of recoveries to 90. Two patients remain hospitalized with Covid-19, one in Cabo Delgado and one in Inhambane. Marlene said their condition “remains stable”.

Breaking the positive cases down province by province, 136 are from Cabo Delgado, 47 from Maputo City, 22 from Maputo Province, 13 from Nampula, 12 from Sofala, four from Tete, three from Inhambane, three from Gaza, two from Zambezia, one from Niassa and one from Manica.

As of Saturday, Mozambique’s key Covid-19 statistics were: 244 positive cases, of whom 90 have made a full recovery and 151 are considered active cases, Three Covid-19 patients have died, two from the disease itself, and one from unrelated other pathologies.