ACCORDING to the United Nations Development Programme it will take Zimbabwe’s economy some 16 years of uninterrupted growth at roughly 5% per year to get to the level it would have been had it not been for this past decade of mind-numbing mismanagement and lunacy in our quarters. With life expectancy in our country sadly pegged in the early thirties primarily because of the HIV devastation, many of our people will succumb and fall to this great nemesis. A sizeable number of Zimbabweans will not live to see or realise the fruit of their current sacrifices and toils upon which they forcibly and repetitively embark day in and day out. The breakdown of the fabric of our health care sector has seen an unchecked rise in deaths among the poor. Even the once conquered cholera is back and claiming lives in Harare and Chitungwiza, a sure sign of collapse in service delivery.      HIV is no longer that death sentence of the past in most developed countries. Many nations who have carried on in the path of economic growth have also begun realising the same as true. We do not have access to HIV treatment in Zimbabwe. The few figures who wield the real power to change this look to have embarked on a peculiar disempowerment of the population of Zimbabwe, even going to the extent of denying them access to basic health care and life extending drugs. It is worrying that we also do not have proper access to the treatment of simple day to day ailments like flu, tonsillitis, anaemia, and headaches, the common causes and effects of which ultimately play a part in the gradual degradation and eventual overwhelming of the immune system by HIV. It is not only the supply of expensive antiretroviral drugs that will raise life expectancy in our country. It is rather primarily the availability of that basic medical care as was the case in the recent past when our health care delivery system was one of the best in Africa that needs to be restored to secure our short and medium term livelihoods. Given the life expectancy statistics, there is not a lot to be excited about by the signing of a deal that is clearly unlikely to herald and establish a change we will be part of.We continue to be witness to the disconcerting insincerity of some who are party to the deal. Unless a plausible and acceptable distribution of key ministries like Health and Finance takes place, millions of our citizens will sadly not live to behold the restoration of the former glory of our great nation that is Zimbabwe. Sad isn’t it? Rogers Makaza,Harare.
