Mozambique News

The World Health Report 2013 is now available in Portuguese. The Report focuses on the importance of research in advancing progress towards universal health coverage, which means that citizens obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them. The report identifies the benefits of increased investment in health research by low- and middle-income countries through case studies from around the world incl. Mozambique (page 108), and proposes ways to further strengthen this type of research and information sharing.

Maputo, 20 May 2015 - To scale up the cholera response activities in Mozambique, the Ministry of Health (MoH), in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and support from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh (icddr,b), organized a series of trainings to ensure standardized case management and laboratory diagnosis protocols to reduce mortality and unnecessary deaths from diarrhoeal diseases. 

With a prevalence of 46% of children under five in rural areas , malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Mozambique.  The disease represents nearly half of all outpatient visits and more than half of all inpatient visits at paediatric clinics.

Around 20% of deaths caused by road traffic accidents in Mozambique are children under 13 years. Children are particularly vulnerable because they often walk or use unsafe transportation to and from school. 

SaveKidsLives is the theme for Global Road Safety Week 2015. The week is a call for action by policy makers to protect children from fatal accidents by creating a safe journey to and from school with speed limits on the roads, safe foot- and cycle paths, safe crossings, seatbelts in school busses and other public transportation, and helmets for motorcyclists. 

Malaria accounts for a high burden of morbidity and mortality in all parts of Mozambique especially among children. The disease is particularly prevalent in the rural areas, where almost 1 in 2 children under five have or have had malaria

To lower the high disease burden and reduce mortality rates, the Ministry of Health and WHO conducted a training course for a core team of malaria laboratory technicians from the National Reference Laboratory. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Mozambique is conducting in collaboration with the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of the University of Lisbon, a short course on health financing funded under the Partnership between the European Union and WHO for policy dialogue to achieve Universal Health Coverage.

In Cabo Delgado, only 2.9% of women between 15-49 years are using a family planning method, according to the Demographic Health Survey 2011. 

Maputo, 6 November 2015 – A joint mission of the United Nations Interagency Task Force on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) visited Mozambique from 2-6 November to support the UN Country Team in providing technical assistance to the government in tackling NCDs - principally cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers, and chronic respiratory diseases. In Mozambique, NCDs cause 23% of all deaths and nearly 1 in 5 people die prematurely from NCDs and are having an increasing adverse socioeconomic impact on the country.