Maputo — Health Minister Ivo Garrido said on Wednesday that, thanks to mass vaccination campaigns, one of the main child killers, measles, has been effectively defeated in Mozambique.

Answering questions in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Garrido said there were just 278 cases of measles diagnosed in 2008. "It is very rare for doctors to find case of measles in Mozambique nowadays", he said.

Also in 2008, leprosy had "ceased to be a public health problem in Mozambique", he said. The national average had dropped to just 0.5 cases of this disfiguring disease per 10,000 inhabitants, and in none of Mozambique's 11 provinces was the prevalence higher than one case in 10,000 people.

The Mozambican health ministry could also record successes in the battle against malaria. Over the past four years, the number of recorded malaria cases had fallen by 24 per cent, and the number of malaria deaths by 35 per cent.

As for the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the number of people receiving the live prolonging anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy had risen beyond the government's targets. Garrido said the number of patients on ARV drugs had increased from 6,000 in December 2004 to over 140,000 at the end of May this year.

The number of doctors in the country had risen by 35 per cent, from 682 in 2004 to 925 in 2009. Since the Mozambican population is around 21.4 million, this means that there is one doctor for every 23,000 inhabitants.

The government is approaching its target of placing at least one doctor in each of the 128 districts. Garrido said there are currently doctors in 115 districts, and this month two more districts will receive doctors for the first time.

The Minister said that, as of 2008, open heart surgery became available in the Maputo Central Hospital, and so far 15 patients have been operated on. This year the first hemodialysis unit in Mozambican history opened in Maputo, and people with kidney disease no longer have to travel to South Africa for treatment. Garrido said that in the past five months the new unit has saved the lives of 25 people.

He stressed that the Mozambican national health service is essentially free of charge. The cost for a consultation is symbolic - the equivalent of 20 US cents - while there is no charge at all for hospitalization. This was the case, he declared, because the government "believes that health care is a duty of the state, and a fundamental human right".

Pf/ (425)