THE TRUTH ABOUT ZIMBABWE – NEWS THIS WEEK

… Aids is ravaging Zimbabwe and I am no expert on the topic but you don’t have to be here because the disease and its effects are all around us all the time. Official estimates are that 3000 people are dying from Aids here every week, I think the number is probably far, far higher than that. 7 out of 10 people are unemployed in Zimbabwe and there are hundreds of thousands of people who are HIV positive but cannot afford the anti retrovirals, let alone one decent meal a day.

Everywhere you look you see Aids staring you in the face. The obituary notices in the newspapers and the dates on headstones in the cemeteries are filled with people who have died in their twenties and thirties. In almost every shop and street you see young men and women as thin as skeletons, with sunken eyes, grey hair, swollen feet and sores on their faces and necks. On hospital cards you read the doctors’ reports of the sudden onset of epilepsy and arthritis or prolonged diarrhoea. The recommendations are always: “improve nutrition, needs milk, eat fruit and vegetables, take vitamin supplements.” To anyone living in a country with 525{a9f0d31f6175b3e4775e11a66c07db268fb74408d6095f6b46eeec420c0e9f62} inflation these words are a joke. Milk, fruit, eggs and vegetables have become unaffordable to the vast majority of people and so, young women like Chipo and her beautiful son, just fade away and die.