SADC team joins Mozambique flood rescue effort

A regional emergency team has arrived in Mozambique to help deal with the aftermath of severe flooding.

The Southern African Development Community, or SADC, has sent a specialist unit to support local authorities, after more than 650,000 people were affected by weeks of heavy rain.

The team, which landed in the country on Saturday, includes experts in logistics, search and rescue, public health, communications, and civil–military coordination. They’ve been integrated into Mozambique’s national humanitarian system to reinforce ongoing rescue and recovery efforts.

The floods have damaged key roads, schools, health centres and other critical infrastructure. Gaza Province is currently the worst hit, with nearly 392,000 people affected and four deaths reported.

Additional fatalities have been confirmed in other regions: three in Maputo Province, one in Maputo City and four in Sofala Province. That brings the nationwide death toll to at least twelve, as emergency teams continue to reach isolated communities and assess the full scale of the disaster.

Weeks of heavy rainfall, compounded by dam releases to prevent structural failure, have affected more than 700,000 people, more than half of them children, leaving a trail of destruction across vast farmland, according to humanitarians bodies such as the World Food Program and UNICEF.

On Friday, the World Health Organization warned of severe disruptions to health services in Gaza and Maputo provinces following the destruction of at least 44 health facilities, leaving tens of thousands without access to care.

The U.N. agency said that damage to critical infrastructure has interrupted service delivery, while more than 50,000 people who have been forced to relocate to temporary shelters face limited or nonexistent basic health services.

It warned that displaced people on long-term medication face life-threatening interruptions, and said that urgent action is needed to restore essential services, deploy mobile health teams and ensure continuity of care for people with chronic conditions.

Across the three countries, humanitarian agencies say hunger and disease risks are rising, with extreme weather wiping out crops that millions of small-scale farmers rely on to feed themselves, while the threat of water-borne diseases such as cholera looms large.