ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the field sites with respect to environmental, demographic and contextual characteristics that have been suggested as influencing the incidence of cholera and dysentery. It presents a macro-scale analysis of incidence of the two diseases. The chapter describes characteristics of the population and mobility. It introduces use of land and water and background infrastructural features. At the outset of investigations, there is some evidence suggesting a demographic explanation for the spread of dysentery, in contrast to the environmental explanation advanced for the cholera epidemic. The rapidity of the spread of dysentery meant that it often broke out in areas where cholera was just being brought under control, such as in the provincial capitals of Quelimane and Beira at the end of 1992. The dysentery epidemic arrived in Gorongosa as the cholera epidemic waned. Surprisingly this information does not appear in Medecins Sans Frontieres reports which only sporadically mention case of serious diarrhoea after June 1993.
