BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE — There are long lines in Zimbabwe for everything from food to money, but the queue that defeated Alexander Mudewe and his wife, Perpetual, could end up killing them: the one for HIV drugs at the government hospital here.
When Alexander became ill three months ago, the couple decided to get tested; both were HIV-positive.
So they went to Mpilo Hospital. After five hours in the line for antiretroviral drugs, they were told that the hospital wasn't registering any new HIV-positive patients.
"I actually cried," said Perpetual, 47. "I was not feeling well. They just tell you to come back tomorrow. You come back tomorrow and there's another long queue again."
"You end up giving up," Alexander said as a rat scuttled across the floor of the couple's small house. "You end up going home."
Zimbabwe's financial crisis has seen the near collapse of its health system. Hit by foreign currency shortages and hyperinflation, the government stopped taking new AIDS patients in October 2006. Many people die of AIDS complications before they can get antiretroviral medicine.
In Zimbabwe, 321,000 people need antiretroviral medicines, or ARVs, according to the World Health Organization, and only 91,000 have access to them.
An April report by WHO and two other U.N. agencies says about 6% of children in need of treatment were getting it. The government says more than 2,200 Zimbabweans die every week of AIDS complications.
Zimbabwe's delivery of ARVs is below average for low- and middle-income countries, according to the agencies' report. In sub-Saharan Africa, an average 28% of those in need of the drugs get them. For Zimbabwe, the percentage is about 24%.
As access to government treatment has become impossible for most, the private market is out of reach too. A December report by International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, an international advocacy group, says the number of private HIV/AIDS patients dropped from 10,000 in July to 6,000 because government policies and inflation had caused the cost of treatment to soar.
Ahmed Leher, 52, cannot bear to call his illness by its name. To him it's "this thing" or "this rubbish."
His weight has dropped by 50 pounds in a few months. He is angry knowing that there's a medicine out there that could save him, but the hospital system won't give it to him.
"I don't want to die young," he said, his face anguished. "I know there's still life. I know that with ARVs I can live for years.
