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/ 17 September 2007
A swelling crowd of people has gathered at the rural health centre at Monte Xiluvo in Nhamatanda district in the central Mozambican province of Sofala. Most are mothers with young children who try to protect themselves from the gusty wind as they wait for their consultation with Caetano Mendosa, the nurse responsible for the centre.
More than 1 000 Mozambicans, including children, are trafficked to South Africa every year where they are forced into prostitution or used as free or cheap labour. In response, Mozambique’s Cabinet last week approved a new law that will make human trafficking a crime punishable by long prison sentences.
Sandra Alberto was heavily pregnant when Cyclone Favio struck Mozambique earlier this month, ripping the zinc roof off the house she and her two children had taken refuge in. "I grabbed hold of my children because I thought the wind would blow them away," she said. "Roofs and other objects were flying all over the place."
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/ 11 January 2007
The contradictions in Maria’s life are typical of many women in Mozambique. On one level the 33-year-old is advancing. She is able to attend night school to gain the education that the 16-year-long civil war interrupted when she was a child. She has learnt to sew to complement the money she makes as a trader. She is trying to take the necessary steps to ”live positively” after finding out that she has contracted HIV.
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/ 23 December 2006
A motley group of about 20 Mozambican men and women eyed each other tentatively as they met for the first time to discuss how they could jointly fight HIV/Aids. On one side of the table were doctors, nurses and counsellors. On the other side sat traditional healers, or cureindeiros as they are known in Mozambique.
With World Health Day (April 7) rapidly approaching, attention is being directed this week to the widespread shortage of health workers. The theme for World Health Day, <i>Working Together for Health</i>, was chosen to add momentum to efforts at resolving the crisis — something that is nowhere more evident than in Mozambique.
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/ 2 November 2005
I am a 12-year-old girl from Mozambique. Although I am struggling to keep up with my lessons, what I enjoy most is going to school. I can eat well at school, and the teacher gives me food for my aunt and my young cousins. I also get free schoolbooks there. But I do worry about my aunt when I am at school. I wonder how she and my baby cousin are coping without me.
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/ 24 October 2005
At the tender age of 12, Pedro Moniz is already a veteran when it comes to observing the regimen of anti-retroviral drugs that keeps Aids-related illnesses at bay. "I take one tablet at 6am, another at 1.45pm just before school, another at 5.45pm when I return from school — and the last at 10pm," he says, without pausing to think.
Lying outside her hut on a tattered mat, 20-year-old Maria struggled with her breathing as she tried to explain why she and her five orphaned nieces and nephews in her charge had not eaten. Maria was dying from Aids-related diseases, as well as from severe malnutrition. "I had to sell my plot of land to survive," she said through her gasps for breaths.