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."
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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/ 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.