After deadly cyclone, Mozambique now faces cholera threat

A woman carrying water and a baby on her back after collecting water in Beira, Mozambique, Monday, March 25, March 24, 2019. (Photo by THEMBA HADEBE / AP)

BEIRA, Mozambique — Relief operations pressed into rural Mozambique where an unknown number of people remain without aid more than 10 days after a cyclone ripped across the country, while the World Health Organization warned of a “second disaster” if disease breaks out.

The United Nations said some 1.8 million people there need urgent help after Cyclone Idai, and it made an emergency appeal for $282 million for the next three months.

The death toll remained at least 761 in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, and authorities have warned it is “very preliminary.” More bodies will be found as floodwaters drain away.

Emergency responders raced to contain deadly diseases such as cholera, which authorities have guaranteed will break out as more than a quarter-million displaced people shelter in camps with little or no clear water and sanitation. Many wells were contaminated by the floods.

People are living in tent camps, schools, churches, roads and other impromptu places on higher ground. Many have little but their clothes, squatting over cooking fires and picking their way around stretches of increasingly dirty water or simply walking through it, resigned.

The World Health Organization said it is expecting a “spike” in malaria cases in Mozambique. The disease-carrying mosquitoes breed in standing water.

WHO also said 900,000 oral cholera vaccines were expected to arrive later this week. Cholera is caused by eating contaminated food or drinking water and can kill within hours. Cases of diarrhea have been reported.

“We must not let these people suffer a second disaster through a serious disease outbreak or inability to access essential health services. They have suffered enough,” Dr. Djamila Cabral, the WHO Representative in Mozambique, told reporters in Geneva. She said people in camps were living in “horrific conditions” and that about 55 health centers had been severely damaged.

Aid continued to arrive, including much-needed air support. The World Food Program received $280,000 from the European Union to support the deployment of a U.N. Humanitarian Air Service helicopter that will deliver assistance to the two worst-hit districts in Zimbabwe, Chimanimani, and Chipinge.

The United States said it had donated nearly $3.4 million in emergency food assistance to the World Food Program, whose director was touring Beira on Tuesday.

A field hospital was being set up in Beira and another is arriving later this week, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. A sanitation system to serve some 22,000 people has arrived and a water purification unit to serve some 25,000 people is expected to arrive on Wednesday, the organization said.

Bit by bit, the scale of the destruction became clearer. The cyclone reportedly destroyed all houses in the village of Metuchira, home to nearly 38,000 people, the U.N. humanitarian agency said.

Amid the relief efforts, grieving people in Mozambique struggled to bury the dead. “Efforts are underway to improve management of dead bodies, as mortuary facilities were either destroyed and/or lack enough facilities and capacity,” the U.N. humanitarian agency said. /atm