Health authorities blame the drying up of foreign aid under Western sanctions imposed to end political and human rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe. A power-sharing agreement aimed at bringing the opposition into the government could open the gates to foreign aid. But negotiations have stalled over how much power rests with Mugabe.
Meanwhile, the economic meltdown is evident in empty store shelves, long lines at gas stations - and hospitals where elevators don't work and patients are carried to upper wards in makeshift hammocks of torn sheets and blankets.
Jacob Kwaramba, an insurance clerk, brought his brother to Harare's Parirenyatwa hospital, once the pride of health services in southern Africa. Emergency room doctors sent Kwaramba to a private pharmacy to buy drugs for his brother's lung infection. He returned two hours later to find his brother dead, he told the AP in the emergency room.
"I couldn't believe it. It wasn't a fatal illness," he said.
Another family said a relative dying of cancer was sent home, and no painkillers could be found in Harare pharmacies. Relatives abroad were able to pay for morphine, but by the time import clearance was obtained from the state Medicines Control Authority, the man had died in agony, the family said, requesting anonymity for fear of government retribution.
A report by six independent Zimbabwean doctors indicates the scale of the collapse.
"Elective surgery has been abandoned in the central hospitals and even emergency surgery is often dependent on the ability of patients' relatives to purchase suture materials from private suppliers," it said.
"Pharmacies stand empty and ambulances immobilized for want of spare parts . . . this is an unmitigated tragedy, scarcely conceivable just a year ago."
The doctors who compiled the six-page report for circulation among aid and development groups withheld their names because comments seen as critical of Mugabe are a punishable offense.
