ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a range of underlying socio-economic, administrative and behavioural factors that influence incidence of cholera and dysentery in the different areas. It addresses the relationship between health and urban infrastructure. The chapter considers the health implications of structural adjustment and discusses the role of changing behaviour within the affected communities. The idea of effective medical care as a form of social control was first introduced in Mozambique with the colonial administration's Boletim da Assistencia Medica aos Indigenas in 1928. The spatial distribution of housing conditions is an important feature of the built environment that warrants attention in the analysis of incidence of cholera and dysentery. Differences in habitation in the main cities of Mozambique are typical of many colonial cities in that there is a dense urbanised core of colonial houses and blocks of flats and congested surrounding suburbs of more makeshift housing.
