Mozambique News

Maputo 31 May 2013 - The sun is setting over the city of Maputo. Shops are closing and the roads that were bustling just an hour earlier are now quiet and almost empty. Though most people are on their way home, security guard Lucas Jaime has most of his working day ahead of him. Next to him on a small table in front of the tall building where he works are a pack of cigarettes and a set of matches.

Dorca Taulo gave birth to her first child 6 years ago in the house of the traditional birth attendant in her community in Milange, Zambezia. When she recently became pregnant again, Fany Pitala, her traditional birth attendant, accompanied her to the nearest health centre in Dachudua, Milange so she could give birth in a clinic. 

Maputo, October 6, 2014 - Experts, academics, senior staff  from the Government and partners in the health sector recently participated in Maputo, in the 1st National Meeting of Public Health to analyze the situation of Public Health in Mozambique and define actions to improve health status of populations. 

The Acting Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Mozambique, Dr. Jacob Mufunda, took part in the three day event and shared his experience on the control of Ebola in Sierra Leone with the provincial’s medical chiefs and other senior public health expert. 

Maputo 10 April 2013 - The Mozambican Ministry of Health, introduced on 10 April 2013 the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine 10 (PCV-10) into the national immunization program. The launch of the PCV-10 took place in Boane District and was chaired by the Minister of Health, Dr. Alexandre Manguele, who also gave the first vaccine.

The introduction of the PCV-10 was organized collaboration with the WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, USAID, Save the Children, VillageReach, Fundação para Desenvolvimento da Comunidade (FDC), and other partners.

The road to Milange health centre is dry and dusty. The heavy rain falls in the beginning of the year in Zambezia province are a distant memory and Milange has not seen rains for days now. Chief maternal and child health nurse, Maria Florinda, and her assistant have most of their working day behind them. They have just assisted Elisa Uasone in the birth of a baby boy.  Now they are filling out the last details of today’s register in the quiet maternity ward. 

With more than 2.5 million children unregistered and the causes of over 300,000 deaths unknown in the country, Mozambique has embarked on an ambitious plan to address the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) needs of its population.

“When a child is crying, we have to take it to the health centre to do tests, and see which is the illness, because the health centre is where all the needed care is available…”. 

Each time a women breaks out singing; the rest of the group quickly follows through.

“We have to take care of the children because they are the richness of tomorrow. We cannot give water to the baby, we have to give breast milk…” 

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.