Mozambique floods spur roof births
2013-01-28 08:58
Guija - Now that the water is receding, residents affected
by flooding in Mozambique are starting to repair the damage, looking for good
news amid reports of rooftop births and diarrhoea, and cholera lurking in the
shadows.
The flooding from the Limpopo river, which began on
Wednesday, killed at least 40 people and forced more than 100 000 others to
flee.
Amid the catastrophe, two babies were born on roofs where
their mothers had taken refuge in the southern village of Guija.
"We helped one woman give birth on the roof of a clinic
and another on top of a house when the water came," Guija's district
health director Antonio Assede told AFP.
"One of the babies is four-day-old Rofino, who appears
healthy at her mother's breast."
Olalia Machava, an aunt who assisted in the birth, added:
"We had climbed to the top of the house when she started to have pains.
"A nurse helped her. The next day in the afternoon they
came in boats to take her to hospital."
The mud-filled hospital in Guija is empty, with all the
furniture and equipment drying outside, while a nurse distributes painkillers
to the sick and ensures the injured are airlifted to hospitals outside the
area.
Local medical staff have already treated around 70 cases of
diarrhoea and are keeping an eye out for cholera and other waterborne diseases.
"The children are beginning to get sick with diarrhoea
because of the dirty water they are drinking. Their parents too," Guija
nurse Lourdes Machava told AFP.
Emergency supplies
Children in the village said they have had no drinking water
nor food since Wednesday.
Apart from air transport, which is reserved for urgent
cases, the only way to access the community of roughly 7 000 residents is by
boat.
Local officials estimate that Guija will remain isolated for
at least three months, the time it will take to rebuild the roads and bridges
swept away by the Limpopo waters.
In the neighbouring town of Chokwe, the 9 000 residents who
stayed behind - out of a population of 60 000 - began clean-up efforts, laying
out to dry the possessions they were able to salvage.
Others walked through the streets drunk, having helped
themselves to alcohol in flood-damaged stores in a town in urgent need of clean
water and food.
With relief efforts focused on camps located around 30km away,
some locals said they were struggling to get their hands on emergency supplies.
A bereaved father recalled how on Wednesday the flood waters
swept his five-year-old daughter from his arms as they tried to escape to
higher ground.
"The water was up to my neck. I was carrying her. The
water took her," Jose Nhanve told AFP.
Rotting animal carcasses
He said he spent two days scouring the edges of the
floodwaters for Eldinha and making enquiries with the authorities, without
success.
Four bodies were found in Chokwe, whose flood-ravaged
streets were also littered with rotting animal carcasses.
According to a toll from the United Nations on Friday, the
severe flooding killed at least 36 people, most in the southern province of
Gaza.
The floods, which have also hit neighbouring South Africa
and Zimbabwe, are the result of days of torrential rains this month that
swelled the river.
The UN children's agency Unicef said on Sunday that the
number of people forced to flee their homes in the Limpopo valley had reached
108 000.
At least 23 000 families have sought shelter in camps in
Gaza, and the UN World Food Programme has begun feeding some 75 000
flood-affected people, according to the United Nations.
While the river has started to recede in Chokwe and Guija,
the situation remains serious in the partly inundated coastal tourist city of
Xai-Xai.
At least 45 000 people were thought to be at risk there from
the deluge, Rita Almeida, a spokesperson for Mozambique's Disaster Relief
Management Institute, told AFP.
- SAPA
