The economic crisis in Zimbabwe is getting so bad, that doctors’ main advice to patient is simple — “Don’t get sick“:

The advice of doctors to Zimbabweans is, don’t get sick. If you do, don’t count on hospitals — they’re short of drugs and functioning equipment.

As the economy collapses, the laboratory at a main 1,000-bed hospital has virtually shut down. X-ray materials, injectable antibiotics and anticonvulsants have run out.

Emergency resuscitation equipment is out of action. Patients needing casts for broken bones need to bring their own plaster. In a country with one of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics, medical staff lack protective gloves.

And whose fault is this? The West’s, of course:

Health authorities blame the drying up of foreign aid under Western sanctions imposed to end political and human rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe.

Of course, given that many of these health authorities likely owe their position to Mugabe, one would hardly expect them to point their fingers at the real cause, namely Mugabe’s brutal dictatorship and his disastrous economic policies resulting in an annual inflation rate of 2,200,000%.