BEIRA, Mozambique: The Mozambican government has confirmed the outbreak of cholera in the port city of Beira in the wake of deadly Cyclone Idai. At least five cholera cases were reported. Thousands of people were trapped for more than a week in submerged villages without access to clean water after the cyclone smashed into Mozambique on March 14, causing catastrophic flooding. Relief efforts have increasingly focused on containing outbreaks of waterborne and infectious diseases.
In Munhava, central Beira, doctors and nurses at a newly set up treatment centre said they are treating around 140 patients a day for diarrhoea. Many of the patients arrive too weak to walk. A reporter said that he saw two men carrying an unconscious woman from a rickshaw into the clinic. Inside, those too ill to sit lay on concrete benches attached to intravenous drips. Mothers were perched on plastic chairs in the courtyard, trying to get their children to drink rehydration salts from green cups.
"He won't take it," said Marisa Salgado, 22, holding her boy, aged 1-1/2, who stared with glazed eyes. It was the second time she had been to the clinic this week, she said. Her child's diarrhoea returned as soon as she got home, despite the chlorine solution nurses gave her to purify their water. "I'm scared. I don't know what to do," she said.
Ussene Isse, national director of medical assistance at the Health Ministry, said he expected cholera to spread beyond the five cases. "When you have one case, you have to expect more cases in the community," he said. Health workers are battling 2,700 cases of acute watery diarrhoea - which could be a symptom of cholera - Isse added.
Health workers apply the same treatment for acute diarrhoea or cholera, with severe cases requiring rapid rehydration through intravenous fluids. Such diseases are another threat in the wake of Idai, which tore through Mozambique and into neighbouring Zimbabwe and Malawi, killing more than 700 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of others.
Children dying
Lin Lovue, 27, said he had rushed his son to the clinic after a day of diarrhoea. Within an hour of getting there, the child died. "The biggest challenge is organisation," said a coordinator at the clinic. "The health system was completely broken after the storm and we have to re-establish capacity fast." Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs the emergency centre, has set up two others in Beira and is providing consultations via mobile clinics in several neighbourhoods.
The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine to affected areas from a global stockpile. The death toll in Mozambique from Cyclone Idai has risen to 468, Mozambican disaster management official Augusta Maita said. That takes the total number of deaths in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi to 707 people, with many more missing.
