Mozambique faces Cholera outbreak after Cyclone Idai

Mozambique said on Wednesday five cases of cholera had been confirmed around the badly damaged port city of Beira after a powerful cyclone killed more than 700 people across a swathe of southern Africa.

Cyclone Idai smashed into Mozambique around midnight on March 14 before tearing through neighbouring Zimbabwe and Malawi, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and wrecking an area of 3,000 sq km (1,200 sq miles).

Some 1.8 million people in Mozambique need urgent help after Cyclone Idai, the United Nations said in an emergency appeal for $282 million for the next three months.

Cyclone Idai was "one of the worst weather-related catastrophes in the history of Africa," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters in New York. He raised the spectre of hunger, saying the storm inundated Mozambique's breadbasket on the eve of harvest.

Emergency responders raced to contain deadly diseases such as cholera, which authorities have said will break out as more than a quarter-million displaced people shelter in camps with little or no clear water and sanitation. Many wells were contaminated by the floods.

People are living in tent camps, schools, churches, roads and other impromptu places on higher ground. Many have little but their clothes, squatting over cooking fires and picking their way around stretches of increasingly dirty water or simply walking through it, resigned.

The World Health Organization said it is expecting a "spike" in malaria cases in Mozambique. The disease-carrying mosquitoes breed in standing water.

WHO also said 900,000 oral cholera vaccines were expected to arrive later this week. Cholera is caused by eating contaminated food or drinking water and can kill within hours. Cases of diarrhoea have been reported.

"We must not let these people suffer a second disaster through a serious disease outbreak or inability to access essential health services. They have suffered enough," Dr Djamila Cabral, the WHO Representative in Mozambique, told reporters in Geneva.

She said people in camps were living in "horrific conditions" and that about 55 health centres had been severely damaged.