Imagine a hospital complete with state-of-the-art medical facilities, an eager, well-educated staff, and free health care for the poor. Immunization programs abound; health care workers educate women on contraceptive use and primary school children on the subjects of nutrition, sanitation, and the "five killer diseases." The infant mortality rate rapidly decreases and life expectancy increases accordingly. This hospital is located on a wide street lined with flowering trees in a city dubbed the "Sunshine City" for its invigorating climate, beautiful gardens and parks filled with light.

Now imagine a hospital lacking essential drugs, medical equipment, doctors, and nurses. Electricity is sporadic. Surgeons are accustomed to operating in the dim light that filers through dirty windows. Patients suffering from malaria and pneumonia are only given pain killers. In the twenty-body maximum capacity morgue, 1,200 corpses in various states of decay are piled into the limited chambers or strewn across the floor. Clean sheets are unavailable because laundry service is too expensive. Doctors are unable to dry or clean their hands due to the lack of towels and soap. Sometimes the hospital goes two days without clean water. This hospital is located on a street with broken traffic lights and crater-like potholes next to an ever-expanding pile of trash; garbage collection is an obsolete service. The Zimbabwe Standard regrettably refers to this city as a "sewage farm," an apt title for a city connected by streets inundated with raw sewage.

Harare Central Hospital has known both of these extreme conditions, the former from the early 1980s through the early 1990s and the latter from the late 1990s to the present day. The follies of the World Bank, the corrupt regime and repressive policies of President Robert Mugabe, and the AIDS epidemic have all helped transform a hospital once considered "the African paradigm" into just another dysfunctional African hospital. As one of the main government hospitals in Zimbabwe's capital Harare, Harare Central Hospital is responsible for the well-being of the poor who cannot afford private clinics. It seems to have relinquished its duty, however, as the sick and destitute come to die at Harare Hospital rather than seek treatment.