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Mozambique: National Sanitation and Hygiene Campaign Planned
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
18 February 2008
Posted to the web 19 February 2008
Maputo
The Mozambican government will launch a National Sanitation and Hygiene Campaign on 1 March, Health Minister Ivo Garrido announced on Monday.
This campaign, scheduled to run until the end of the year, "is the starting point for the changes we have to make in the coming years. We want to start a new phase, a new approach to hygiene".
He promised massive health education over this period. Sheer ignorance of health risks was a major factor. "People don't know the negative consequences of their habits", Garrido said, citing the case of women who allow their infants to bathe in pools or streams where they become infected with bilharzia.
"We want to involve all Mozambicans in improving the culture of sanitation and hygiene in the country", the Minister declared.
One consequence of poor sanitation and hygiene is the spread of water-borne diseases, including cholera. Garrido described the current cholera situation in Mozambique as "very bad". This year eight of the country's 11 provinces have recorded cholera outbreaks - Maputo City, Maputo Province, Gaza, Manica, Sofala, Tete, Cabo Delgado and Zambezia.
Garrido confirmed an outbreak of acute diarrhea in which nine people have died in one of the centres for flood victims in Mutarara, in the Zambezi Valley. Only laboratory tests will show whether these were cases of cholera.
The directives for the national campaign point out that "defective sanitation, scarcity of water, irregular management of waste, an inadequate number of latrines, the sale of food in a disorderly and unprotected way, and poor individual hygiene are some of the reasons for the high prevalence of diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, parasitic diseases, malaria and skin diseases".
The campaign hopes to change people's habits, ensuring the construction of latrines (ideally one for every ten people), the proper treatment of drinking water to ensure that it is free of contamination, basic food hygiene, and a fight against such vectors of disease as rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes.
Garrido also announced that, as from Wednesday, President Armando Guebuza will personally lead a "Presidential Initiative for the Health of Women and Children".
Guebuza will hold meetings with health workers, women's representatives, religious leaders and community leaders, to hear their views on what can be done to improve the health of women and children who between them account for two thirds of the Mozambican population.
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Although the mortality rates are falling, the latest statistics suggest that 124 out of every 1,000 children born in Mozambique die before they have reached their first birthday, and that there are 408 maternal deaths out of every 100,000 live births.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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