At least 131 people have died since September due to cholera in Mozambique and another 19,934 have been hospitalized in the country, indicates the Ministry of Health’s daily bulletin.
At least 131 people have died since September due to cholera in Mozambique and another 19,934 have been hospitalized in the country, indicates the daily bulletin of the Ministry of Health (Misau).
In the country’s hospitals, 141 patients are currently hospitalized, with 90 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours, according to the update from the National Directorate of Public Health.
Mozambique has a cumulative 29,370 cases of cholera and a lethality rate of 0.4%. “This is the biggest epidemic of this disease in the last 20 years”, said the Minister of Health, Armindo Tiago, during the opening of a meeting on the subject, today, in Maputo.
He also said that the number of cases tends to decrease at the same time that vaccination advances. According to the Mozambican Health Minister, from a total of 40 affected districts, at least 18 had declared the end of the epidemic by Monday. Cholera is a disease that causes severe diarrhea, which is treatable, but can cause death by dehydration if not promptly combated – being caused, in large part, by the ingestion of food and water contaminated by lack of sanitation networks.
Mozambique, considered one of the countries most severely affected by climate change in the world, has only a few days left until the rainy and cyclonic season, which occurs annually between the months of October and April and is conducive to the spread of cholera.