Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Weeks after massive Cyclone Freddy hit Mozambique for a second time, the still-flooded country is facing a spiralling cholera outbreak that threatens to add to the devastation.
There were over 19,000 confirmed cases of cholera across eight of Mozambique's provinces as of March 27, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a figure which had almost doubled in a week.
Freddy was likely the longest-lived cyclone ever, lasting over five weeks and hitting Mozambique twice. The tropical storm killed 165 people in Mozambique, 17 in Madagascar and 676 in Malawi. More than 530 people are still missing in Malawi two weeks later so that country's death toll could well exceed 1,200.
Freddy made its second landfall in Mozambique's Zambezia province, where scores of villages remain flooded and water supplies are still contaminated.
At a hospital in Quelimane, Zambezia's provincial capital, National Institute of Health director general Eduardo Sam Gudo Jr. reported there were 600 new confirmed cases a day in Quelimane district alone, but said that the real number may be as high as 1,000.
At least 31 died of cholera in Zambezia and over 3,200 were hospitalized between March 15 and 29, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Cases are highest in the neighbourhood of Icidua on the city outskirts, where most residents live in bamboo or adobe mud huts and fetch water in buckets from communal wells. Flooding brought by the cyclone has exposed many of these wells to water contaminated with sewage overflow and other sources of bacteria. Cholera spreads through feces, often when it gets into drinking water.
But until water pipelines ruptured in the floods are repaired, these wells are the only source of water for those in Icidua and communities like it. For now, temporary solutions offer the only hope of stemming the outbreak.
Volunteers go from house to house distributing bottles of Certeza, a local chlorine-based water purifier. Each bottle should last a family for a week, but supplies are running low as local production struggles to keep pace with demand. There are also not enough people to distribute the Certeza, even if greater supplies could be procured, Gudo said.
In the meantime, health workers are struggling to treat the infected with many clinics and hospitals badly damaged. "The cyclone destroyed the infrastructure here," said Jose da Costa Silva, the clinical director of the Icidua health centre. "We are working in parts of the hospital that were not destroyed. Some colleagues are working outside in the open because there's not enough space available for everyone."
Eighty health centres in total were affected by Freddy's two landfalls in Mozambique, according to INGD, the country's disaster management agency.
Although cyclones do occur in southern Africa from December to May, human-caused climate change has made tropical cyclones wetter, more intense and more frequent. The now-dissipated natural La Nina event also worsened cyclone activity in the region. While Cyclone Freddy itself hasn't yet been attributed to climate change, researchers say it has all the right hallmarks of a warming-fuelled weather event.
Formed in early February off Australia, the cyclone with exceptional longevity made an unprecedented crossing of more than 8000 kilometres (5,000 miles) from east to west across the Indian Ocean.
It followed a looping path rarely recorded by meteorologists, hitting Madagascar and Mozambique for the first time at the end of February, and then again in March before barrelling into Malawi.
Restoring normal water supplies in Mozambique will take time, as many damaged pipelines run through areas that are still inaccessible two weeks after the cyclone's last impact.
"A cholera outbreak in a flooded flatland with a very high water table is `mission impossible' to address," Myrta Kaulard, the UN resident coordinator in Mozambique, told Associated Press. "Sanitation is a huge problem and the flooding has affected key infrastructure, such as the water pipelines and the electricity supply ... Repairing that infrastructure in flooded areas is another 'mission impossible."'
Meanwhile, rural areas around Quelimane are facing other threats. Many villages and fields are still underwater, and the humidity has bred swarms of mosquitoes carrying malaria. In a makeshift displacement camp on the bank of a flooded rice paddy near the village of Nicoadala, 20 out of 290 residents are sick with malaria, according to Hilario Milisto Irawe, a local chief.
There were 444 reported cases of malaria in Quelimane district on 24 March alone, but the number is likely much higher as many, such as those in the camp outside Nicoadala, lack access to health facilities.
Compounding the public health crisis, the material livelihoods of hundreds of thousands are at risk as Freddy hit just before the main harvest. It also carried seawater inland, threatening the long term fertility of the soil in an area where malnutrition is already chronic.
"All our farms are flooded. Our rice farms are destroyed. All we can do is start over again, but we don't know how we will do that," said Irawe.
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.