JOHANNESBURG, 24 March 2010 (IRIN) - The worst of the floods are behind them, but now the communities along Mozambique's major rivers face other serious challenges: thousands are displaced and access to food and clean water is limited.

Rivers throughout central and northern Mozambique were swollen to Red Alert level - one notch below declaring a disaster - after weeks of torrential rain locally and in neighbouring Zambia and Zimbabwe.

On 23 March a hydrological bulletin by the National Water Directorate announced that "In the next 24 hours" the Zambezi and Pungue river basins in central Mozambique, and the Messalo River Basin, in the north, "will continue to register lower water levels". The Mozambican Council of Ministers brought the alert level down to orange.

Although the flood response would be phased out, Leila Pakkala, the Representative of the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) responsible for coordination in the Humanitarian Country Team, pointed out that "Many of the [affected] areas were already chronically food insecure [and] the government and partner organizations continue to be preoccupied with food security needs."

The latest UN Country Team (UNCT) Flood Preparedness and Response report, released on 23 March, said "the government had sent an official request for food assistance for 100,000 people in the four most affected districts: Mutarara [and] Mopeia [near the Zambezi River], Morrumbala [on the floodplain] and Chinde [in the Zambezi Delta] ... Food assistance will need to be given in the form of food-for-work, to rebuild."

Pakkala noted that some areas not affected by floods also needed assistance due to months of poor rainfall. Preliminary estimates by the Technical Secretariat for Food Security and Nutrition in Mozambique indicated that some 475,000 households in seven of Mozambique's 10 provinces were suffering the effects of the drought.

She said access to clean drinking water was priority; continued support would be provided to rehabilitate water points, and water committees and maintenance groups in affected areas would be revived.

"Sanitation and hygiene activities ... have been prioritized", the UNCT report said. The distribution of emergency water, sanitation and hygiene supplies was ongoing, and chlorine, soap, certeza - a disinfectant solution for purifying water - jerrycans and buckets were being sent to families in affected areas.

"Around 25,000 people have been reached by messages on promotion of good hygiene practices and malaria prevention as a result of training. Community and provincial radios are disseminating daily messages ... in coordination with District Directorates of Health, with a capacity to reach up to 800,000 people in Zambezia, Sofala and Tete provinces," the report said.

It could have been worse

In a country as poor and vulnerable as Mozambique, extreme climatic events can push entire communities beyond their ability to cope or recover from the multiple impacts of floods, cyclones and drought, and they often descend into a spiral of poverty.
The country is more frequently and severely affected by natural disasters than almost any other in Africa: flooding occurs nearly every year - in the past three decades alone, Mozambique has been hit by 35 hydro-meteorological disasters, affecting nearly 16 million people.

In response, the Mozambican government, mainly through its disaster management agency, INGC, and its international aid and development partners, have invested heavily in preparedness and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) measures.

All that paid off this year. "The response was well organized. DRR and preparedness [programmes] are starting to show results. The response was much better than previous years," Pakkala said.

She noted that lessons had been learnt from previous emergencies: capacity was built in disaster management agencies, partnerships were stronger, stocks were prepositioned, and annual emergency simulation exercises had resulted in an "adequate, appropriate and timely response".

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