BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE — For Zimbabwe's legions of the sick, the most common treatment is nothing more than hope and prayer. Life here is dominated by the downward spiral into illness and death.
To save the sick, families already struggling with the world's highest inflation rate scramble to sell what little they have left.
Children with broken limbs must wait until their parents scrape up the money for a cast. Hospitals have nothing, so doctors send families to buy drugs and even surgical gloves. HIV patients seeking antiretroviral drugs are told to come back months later. Accident victims are lucky to get a tetanus shot.
And when the sick and injured die, as many inevitably do, their bodies are stacked high in the morgues until relatives can afford to take them home in the backs of pickup trucks, on ox-drawn wagons or in pushcarts. The funeral alone can cost nearly half a year's salary, sending the living further into a spiral of poverty, illness and death.
Nothing more clearly illustrates the collapse of what once was one of Africa's most prosperous countries than the failure of its collective health. In 1990, Zimbabwean life expectancy was 60 years. Now the average woman is dead at 34. Hospital workers have been striking for raises to offset an annual inflation rate of 1,730%. Doctors have to walk or cycle to work, and they can't afford to send family members to their own hospitals.
The political opposition and many Western nations accuse President Robert Mugabe's government of rampant corruption and economic mismanagement. Since 2000, it has seized the land of most of the country's white commercial farmers, who had been the backbone of the economy. Much of the land has gone to Mugabe's political supporters.
The government blames Britain, the former colonial power, and other Western governments for cutting off its access to international loans.
"Things are so bad," said one man, Sikhumbuzo Dube, "that it's more expensive to die than to live these days." The body of Dube's nephew, a 39-year-old communal farmer, lay in the morgue for three weeks until the family could come up with the money to rent a truck.
A young Bulawayo doctor named Nqobile Ncube said many of those who end up in hospitals have little chance.
"You do your ward rounds and you see a patient," Ncube said. "He's in the same condition as the day before. Why? He's not been given the drugs. He is trying to find relatives to buy the drugs for him.
