Mozambique works to contain cholera outbreak after cyclone

April 2, 2023  -QUELIMANE, Mozambique (AP) — Weeks after massive Cyclone Freddy hit Mozambique for a second time, the still-flooded country is facing a spiraling cholera outbreak that threatens to add to the devastation.

There were over 19,000 confirmed cases of cholera across eight of Mozambique’s provinces as of March 27, according to U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a figure which had almost doubled in a week.

Freddy was likely the longest-lived cyclone ever, lasting over five weeks and hitting Mozambique twice. The tropical storm killed 165 people in Mozambique, 17 in Madagascar and 676 in Malawi. More than 530 people are still missing in Malawi two weeks later so that country’s death toll could well exceed 1,200.

Freddy made its second landfall in Mozambique’s Zambezia province, where scores of villages remain flooded and water supplies are still contaminated.

At a hospital in Quelimane, Zambezia’s provincial capital, National Institute of Health director general Eduardo Sam Gudo Jr reported there were 600 new confirmed cases a day in Quelimane district alone, but said that the real number may be as high as 1,000.