Widespread flooding continues to devastate Mozambique, with a growing toll and months still left in the rainy season, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reports.
Nearly 100,000 people have evacuated to shelters, with flooding impacting over 650,000 people and killing 12 since 7 January, according to the National Institute for Disaster Risk Management and Reduction (known by the Portuguese initials INGD).
According to INGD, hundreds of families remain cut off – especially in the southern provinces of Maputo and Gaza – awaiting rescue by boat or helicopter. More than a dozen aircraft are involved in rescue operations, as well as private boats and Navy vessels, and teams from Brazil, South Africa and the UK.
The impacts on homes, infrastructure and livelihoods continue to grow as well. According to the INGD database, as of Sunday, 3,445 houses have been partially destroyed, another 767 destroyed and 153,417 flooded, the last figure more than double what was reported Saturday. Over 285,000 hectares of agricultural land have been impacted, affecting 214,147 farmers, and livestock deaths now exceed 325,000.
[See more: Flood waters inundate Mozambique, forcing thousands to flee]
“We lost everything in the floodwaters, including houses, TV sets, fridges, clothing and livestock – cattle, goats and pigs. Our farms are under water,” Francisco Fernando Chivindzi, a 67-year-old rice farmer in Hobjana, told the BBC. “We have never experienced this level of flooding in my lifetime.”
The Mozambican government has established 49 medical posts in the hard-hit provinces of Gaza and Maputo. According to a government spokesperson, as of last Wednesday, they had treated 1,305 patients, including for acute diarrhoea (495), malaria (459) and acute respiratory infections (352).
Health officials are working to strengthen epidemiological surveillance and relocate critical supplies to safe areas, as well as making over 40,000 mosquito nets available for distribution in accommodation centres. A cargo plane of humanitarian aid arrived from the European Union on Monday, with a second one expected in the coming days.
