Zimbabwe children die of starvation, AIDS

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, April 2 (UPI) -- Zimbabwe's "Drive Out the Filth" campaign has left people without homes or livelihoods and resulted in malnourished, dying and abandoned children.

President Robert Mugabe's three-month Murambatsvina Operation, which began last May, demolished allegedly illegal structures, leaving more than 700,000 homeless and digging through garbage to survive, reported the Sunday Times of London.

Pediatricians in the two main cities of Harare and Bulawayo told the newspaper severe child malnutrition had doubled over the past year and hospital morgues were piled high with bodies people could not afford to bury.

At least 20 corpses of newborn babies are found each week, thrown away or even flushed down lavatories.

Inflation has reached 1,000 percent and the government's seizure of 95 percent of commercial farms has seen food production plummet.

The famine is being hidden by the AIDS epidemic, with more than a quarter of the population HIV-positive.

"Put simply, people are dying of AIDS before they can starve to death," said one surgeon in Bulawayo who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions by Mugabe's police state.