KEY POINTS:
The gap between HIV rhetoric and reality in Zimbabwe has grown into a chasm.
And it is a chasm into which hundreds of thousands of people are falling.
This was the year we were told that the government would roll out free anti-retro viral drugs to nearly 200,000
of the worst hit Aids sufferers.
At the first national conference on HIV/Aids in 2004 President Robert Mugabe spoke not only of the need for ARVs but also of the need for "comprehensive programmes for Aids care that include access to counselling and treatment of opportunistic infections, community-based care and orphan support."
But this year Zimbabwe has been judged by the World Health Organisation to have the lowest life expectancy in the world.
Last month the cemeteries of the capital Harare were declared full.
This week more than 3,500 people will have died of HIV-related illness.
A country whose population at its last census numbered 12 million people is dying in droves; its health system is in total disarray and malnutrition is a daily struggle for the majority of the country.
The reality of the government's Aids policy is perhaps better reflected by Didymus Mutasa, the current Minister of State Security who has said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle; we don't want all these extra people."
The government's approach to the public health catastrophe is characterised by hypocrisy, indifference and denial.
Soaring infection rates have been compounded by a state-sponsored economic meltdown that has provoked a famine in one of Africa's most fertile countries.
Much of the country is forced to subsist on one meagre meal a day and ARVs, even if they were supplied, cannot be taken on an empty stomach.
The hospital dispensaries in Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo, are empty.
The hospitals themselves are almost empty as unofficial charges have put healthcare out of the range of ordinary people.
A senior doctor who has watched the disintegration of the health system had this to say: "They (the government) are still living in denial or cloud cuckoo land when it comes to Aids. They talk of waiting lists of 6-9 months for ARVs. The infected don't live that long."
While HIV sufferers in Europe can now survive for decades, in Zimbabwe it's unusual for someone to survive for 12 months.
Tests conducted on post-natal mothers found infection rates of 70 per cent.
With economic meltdown, mass migration and two thirds of mothers dying within a year of giving birth, Zimbabwe has witnessed an explosion of Aids orphans.
A private survey of Bulawayo's schools found 224 Aids orphans from a sample group of less than one thousand.
There is no reason to hope that the picture is better anywhere else in the country.
Eighteen month old Stablineyathi who lives at a destitute rural orphanage in the rural north of the country is living the reality of Aids in Zimbabwe.
One of 35 orphans, both her parents died of Aids and she has no known relatives.
She is now old enough to test for HIV but with barely enough money to buy food she won't be.
"What good would it do to know?" asks one of the two carers.
- INDEPENDENT
