A ROMAN CATHOLIC priest called Father Seke sat in Harare last week with Blessing, a pregnant parishioner, praying for a normal birth. “Her family has struggled to find money for her birthing,” he said. “But if she needs surgery there is no more and she might pass [away].”

Like millions of other Zimbabweans, Blessing is facing punitive new charges for basic healthcare that have been imposed by the government of President Robert Mugabe as the state collapses around him.

David Parirenyatwa, his health minister, announced last week that public hospitals would be permitted to charge patients in US dollars for essential services.

State media gave examples of the new prices, including US$70 (£50) for an overnight stay in hospital. A caesarean will cost US$130 and parents of premature babies will be charged $5 a day for an incubator. Cancer patients will have to find hundreds of dollars for radiation or chemotherapy.

All the fees are far beyond the means of most people in a country where fewer than 18% are formally employed. According to the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an umbrella group of activists, all but 5% of these are paid in Zimbabwean dollars rendered almost worthless by inflation estimated at 231m%.

“The decision to take a patient on a painful journey to hospital is hard,” a Zimbabwean GP said. “There is no guarantee of treatment at the end of the journey.”

Those who do not form part of the elite must try to cobble together US dollars as best they can by selling whatever they have, or from remittances sent by family members abroad. However, Zimbabweans in other countries are among the first to be laid off as the global credit crunch bites, and resentment of the 3m of them in neighbouring South Africa is growing. Two Zimbabweans were killed in Durban last week when vigilantes searching for amakwerekwere (foreigners) hurled them from a sixth-floor window.

Parirenyatwa’s announcement came as Zimbabwe faced a cholera epidemic that, according to the World Health Organisation, has claimed at least 1,778 lives since August. Heavy December rains helped spread the disease so the crisis is likely to worsen in coming weeks.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions reacted with fury to the new health charges. “The authorities pretend to hate America yet they scramble for the American dollar,” said Gideon Shoko, who leads a railway workers’ union. “This is a display of double standards.”

The Zimbabwean dollar has been debased for the past five years by Gideon Gono, the central banker, who has printed money to fund extravagances such as the one-month holiday and shopping trip to the Far East on which Mugabe and his wife Grace have embarked.

The crisis is affecting even private hospitals. Doctors are paid in local currency worth less than US$10 a month and have stopped coming to work.

Blessing, whose labour may be only days away, is fatalistic. “It is up to God,” she said. “There is nothing I can do.”

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