Health

Zimbabwe

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Zimbabwe's Health

HIV and AIDS

Zimbabwe is experiencing the harshest widespread of AIDS is the world. One fifth of the adults population is living HIV and about 565 become infected a day. Thats about 1 person per every 3 minutes. the country is having a very hard time, trying to respond to this problem, because of it's isolation, both poitically and economically. President Mugabe was criticized by a worldwide commiunity because of this.

The population has decreased by 4 million between 2002 and 2006.
Because of the AIDS epidemic women’s life expectancy is the lowest un the world- 34 years old, yet this data was collected 2 years ago. The World Health Organization said it may be as low as 30 years now.
Zimbabwe has a higher number of orphans, in proportion to its population, than any other country in the world, according to UNICEF. Most of these cases are a result of parents dying from AIDS.
Since 1990 the amount of babies that have died is doubled.

Hunger

Two million people or more are suffering from starvation from both rural and urban areas of Zimbabwe. The is caused by the worsening food crisis in the country. The current drought situation in Southern Africa isn't helping either. The extreamly high inflation rate and shortage of basic goods, such as mealie meal, bread, and sugar. The World Food Programme (WFP) is doing all it can to help with this problem.

Overall Effect

Education has been strongly effected by both AIDS/HIV and hunger. Children can not attend school when they are literally starving to death. Even if you aren't suffering that much from starvation, if you are hungry you dont have energy to walk to school, which most children do. When children do attend school, and are hungry they can't concentrate nearly as much as they could with a full stomach. AIDS/HIV had basically wiped out a whole population of adults which leaves the grandparents, or older children watching their siblings. When the older children have to watch the younger children, they are not able to go to school. When children are not educated, it all causes a ripple effect, which doesn't improve the situation at all.

Deirdre O'Donoghue