Zimbabwe

In recent years, Zimbabwe's health system has come under severe strain. Life expectancy is amongst the lowest in the world, and the country suffers very high rates of preventable communicable diseases such as HIV. According to the WHO, nearly 13 per cent of children die before reaching the age of five. Roughly a third of children go without any vaccinations for common childhood diseases. The collapse of Zimbabwe's healthcare system has resulted in the majority of citizens paying straight out of pocket for medicines, or relying on donations. Increasingly, citizens are turning to traditional medicine. The weakness of the Zimbabwean dollar has lead to a precipitous decline in the country's domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, creating a shortfall of around 70% of the total drugs needs. It is therefore perverse in the extreme that the government imposes an average tariff of around 8% on imported drugs, as well as a punitive VAT rate of 15%.