BMJ  2008;336:471 (1 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39503.700903.DB

News

Floods in southern Africa result in cholera outbreak and displacement

Pat Sidley

1 Johannesburg

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A cholera outbreak has hit Mozambique after severe flooding, with many people dying from the disease, which has spread to the capital, Maputo.

Aid agencies, such as Médicins Sans Frontières, said that more than 70 people had died, but Mozambique’s health ministry, working from registered cases, put the figure at 48.

Mozambique’s plight has been mirrored in Zambia and Zimbabwe, with Unicef reporting that about 70 000 Zambian families have been displaced by the floods and their homes destroyed, Unicef said last week.

One concern that Unicef is trying to tackle is the availability of treatment for people with AIDS, whose regimens may have been interrupted.

Although most of the country’s flooding has taken place in the more northern parts of Mozambique, tens of thousands of people have been displaced, and many have found their way to Maputo and its environs. Much of that area consists of slums, with little . . . [Full text of this article]


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