Differential patterns of disease and injury in Mozambique: New perspectives from a pragmatic, multicenter, surveillance study of 7809 emergency presentations.

Background: There is a paucity of primary data to understand the overall pattern of disease and injuries as well as related health-service utilization in resource-poor countries in Africa.

Objective: To generate reliable and robust data describing the pattern of emergency presentations attributable to communicable disease (CD), non-communicable disease (NCD) and injuries in three different regions of Mozambique.

Methods: We undertook a pragmatic, prospective, multicentre surveillance study of individuals (all ages) presenting to the emergency departments of three hospitals in Southern (Maputo), Central (Beira) and Northern (Nampula) Mozambique.