The World Health Organisation has plotted this precipitous fall in women's mortality in the former British colony from 65, little more than a decade ago, to today's low. Speaking privately, WHO officials admitted to The Independent that the real number may be as low as 30, as the present figures are based on data collected two years ago.

The reasons for this plunge are several. Zimbabwe has found itself at the nexus of an Aids pandemic, a food crisis and an economic meltdown that is killing an estimated 3,500 people every week. That figure is more than those dying in Iraq, Darfur or Lebanon. In war-torn Afghanistan, where women's plight has received global attention, life expectancy is still above 40.

This cull is not an act of God. It is a catastrophe aggravated by the ruthless, kleptocratic reign of Robert Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980. The Mugabe regime has succeeded in turning a country once fêted as the breadbasket of Africa into a famished and demoralised land deserted by its men of working age, with its women left to die a silent death.

[ 20 November 2006: Message edited by: Geneva ]

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Policywonk: what are the other causes of the situation ?

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Zimbabwe was severely affected by the famine and drought which swept Southern Africa in 1992. The country experienced a drop of 90 percent in its maize crop, located largely in less productive lands. Yet, ironically, at the height of the drought, tobacco for export (supported by modern irrigation, credit, research, etc.) registered a bumper harvest. While "the famine forces the population to eat termites," much of the export earnings from Zimbabwe's tobacco harvest were used to service the external debt.

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The quote is from Chossudovsky's The Globalization of Poverty, etc.

Chossudovsky also notes that Zimbabwe was once a prosperous grain surplus country; after the IMF and World Bank imposed "free market" in grain, the peasant economy was destroyed and food security was undermined.