Bled of funds, hospitals close their doors to the dying

THE signs are all around. In the spectre of cholera haunting the sewage-strewn streets of Harare's townships. In the fading bodies of the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans surviving on wild fruits because their fields are barren. In the glass littering streets after embittered soldiers smashed their way into shops that stopped accepting Zimbabwe's near worthless currency as the inflation rate surged through the billions and trillions.
But perhaps nothing is as disturbing a symbol of the collapse of governance in Zimbabwe as the ghostly corridors of the country's biggest hospital as patients are turned away from its doors to die.