Mozambique: Sporadic cases of mpox continue to emerge in Niassa province

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Mozambique: Sporadic cases of mpox continue to emerge in Niassa province

4:35 CAT | 31 Oct 2025

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

Mozambican health authorities say that sporadic mpox infections continue to emerge in Niassa province, the epicentre of the disease, preventing the declaration of the end of the outbreak in the country, despite the significant number of recoveries.

“In order to declare the end of the outbreak, we must have 60 days without a single positive case. Given that we are still seeing positive cases in Niassa province, we cannot currently declare the end of the mpox outbreak in the country,” Aleny Couto, deputy national director of Public Health, explained to Lusa.

“We still have active cases of mpox in the country, mainly in Niassa province, in the region of Lago,” she added.

According to Couto, on Tuesday, that Mozambican province, the epicentre of the outbreak, recorded another case of the disease, bringing the cumulative number of cases to 80, followed by the provinces of Maputo (four), Manica (three) and Tete (two).

Aleny Couto also warns that infected people have not complied with the need for isolation: “What we have observed, mainly in the Lupilichi mines in the Lago region, is that people are not complying [with isolation], they continue to move around.”

“And this is a failure, which is not a failure directly, I think it is what we can call shared responsibility. We have to educate and we are doing this, but the population also has to cooperate in this regard,” she added.

According to the latest bulletin from the National Directorate of Public Health, with data from July 11–October 25, consulted by Lusa, of the total of 89 positive cases, only 19 are still being monitored, between the provinces of Tete and Niassa, with 70 reported as recovered.

Since July, a total of 1,753 suspected cases have been reported and 1,713 laboratory tests have been carried out.

Health authorities have assured that Mozambique is prepared to deal with mpox, with a capacity for 4,000 tests, carried out locally in all provincial capitals through public health laboratories.

Mpox is a zoonotic viral disease, first identified in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the current outbreak in southern Africa, since January 1, 77,458 cases of the disease have been reported in 22 countries, with 501 deaths.

The first case of mpox in Mozambique occurred in October 2022, with one patient in Maputo.

Source: Lusa