Zimbabwe is facing a huge humanitarian emergency – economic and political crises as well as failed harvests due to flooding have led to around 5 million people not being able to grow or purchase food or other essentials. Basic services and the healthcare system have collapsed - the country is now experiencing a growing cholera problem with 7,000 cases having been reported nationally, 300 dead.

Millions of people have left Zimbabwe to escape crushing poverty, food insecurity and a collapsed infrastructure, many of them children. For those left behind and for those who have fled into countries like South Africa, this crisis has left families living in abject poverty.

Situation affecting children

Conditions are very difficult for many children in Zimbabwe. The crisis has crippled basic services and the healthcare system has collapsed.

The four main hospitals in Harare have closed their doors to all obstetric cases, causing a vastly increased risk of death of mothers and babies during birth. The health services have insufficient materials and medicine and inadequately trained staff to deal with patients. On top of which many staff are no longer going to work as they simply are not being paid enough to survive. In 1990, life expectancy was 60 years; in 2005 life expectancy for women had dropped to 37. Today, it stands at 34 – the lowest in the world. Zimbabwe is facing one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world - one in five adults (aged 15-49) is living with HIV and AIDS. More and more children are becoming orphaned and child mortality levels are on the rise.

10 million out of 13 million people in Zimbabwe live in poverty. With inflation at an official level of 243 million %, (in reality in the billions), buying essentials such as food is an enormous struggle for most families, this combined with country wide food insecurity due to harvest failure has left around one-third of all children chronically malnourished with concerns that acute malnutrition is rising.

Many children are going without education – around 75% of state schools are not functioning properly because the majority of state teachers are not working as they are not paid enough to survive and have to look for or work for food. Many poor families are being forced to send their children out to find work or wild foods and simply can no longer afford to send them to school.

Our Response as of June 2009

After an operating ban was lifted in August 2008, Save the Children has scaled up its efforts in Zimbabwe. Save the Children has reached 636,384 individuals, 468,113 who have been children. We have focused a great deal of our response on cholera control. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In December 2008 the Zimbabwe Government declared a national emergency as the amount of cases of cholera increased dramatically killing thousand. Save the Children has supported at least 234,200 individuals including 122,506 children in cholera response.

Save the Children have also conducted extensive aid efforts in the areas of; nutrition, education, food aid, child protection and WASH/hygiene.

Save the Children has providing assistance in Zimbabwe for over 25 years.