Maputo — The number of cholera cases reported in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula has now reached 65, since the first case was diagnosed about two weeks ago, reports Wednesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
The outbreak is blamed on deteriorating sanitation conditions, particularly in the port of Nacala and in the districts of Memba and Nacala-a-Velha, all as a result of heavy rainfall.
The provincial health authorities have responded by increasing the stocks of chlorine for treating contaminated water sources, and of serum to rehydrate cholera victims.
The scale of the problem was hidden for a time by a wrong diagnosis in Nacala port, where victims were treated as if they were simply suffering from diarrhoea.
The head of the Nampula provincial community health department, Antonio Salimo, blamed the mistake on the Nacala hospital director, Cassamo Valgi.
"This is a problem of the hospital director because we sent the results of tests on samples collected in that region, which confirmed that these are, indeed, cases of cholera", Salimo said.
But, for his part, Valgi complained last week that he had not yet received the requested results from the Provincial Health Directorate, and so he was thus treating all cases as simple diarrhoeas.
10 deaths out of 580 diagnosed cases of cholera have been reported from the central province of Sofala, since the outbreak began there in mid-December. All the deaths occurred in Maringue district.
The head of the Sofala Community Health Department, Virginia Saldanha, specified that of the 580 cases, 147 were in Beira, 189 were in the district of Caia, and the remaining 246 were reported from Maringue.
However, deputy national health director Avertino Barreto described the situation in Sofala as under control, saying that all the necessary measures have been taken to deal with it, including provision with medicines. Cabo Delgado province in the far north has reported 300 cases of cholera with five deaths. One of the deaths was reported in Pemba, the provincial capital, whereas the other four were in the district of Montepuez.
In central Zambezia province 3,000 cases of acute diarrhoeas were attended to in various health units, but no deaths were reported.
