Facing COVID‑19 in times of armed conflicts in Northern and Central regions of Mozambique

J. public health policy; 42 (3), 2021
Ano de publicação: 2021

Mozambique is facing two great adversaries. One is COVID-19 that claimed 132 confirmed deaths and 15,866 infections in its first round since the first case recorded on 22 March 2020 until 2 December 2020 [1]. The second is the armed conflicts in the Northern region of Mozambique perpetrated by armed forces linked to the Jihadist group known as Al-Shabaab, and in the Central region by self-proclaimed Military Junta linked to RENAMO (Mozambique Nacional Resistance, the major opposition party). From October 2017 to October 2020, these insurgents conducted over 600 terrorist attacks in the Northern and Central districts of Cabo Delgado province, causing about 2000 deaths, over 60% among civilians [2]. By the end of September 2020, the violence increased internal displacement to over 300,000 peo ple, equivalent to 13% of the population [2].

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