The numbers ceased to mean much to Sarah Chekani about the time inflation in Zimbabwe surged past 50,000% late last year. It has doubled again since then, to the alarm of Robert Mugabe heading into this month's presidential election. But that hardly matters to Chekani and others like her who survive in an orbit touched only fleetingly by cash or the spiralling exchange rate.

Nor do the other numbers that the central bank governor has called "an economic HIV" - half the population living on 50p a day, 80% unemployment and 45% of Zimbabweans malnourished - mean much when what you are worried about is your own young children.

To Chekani, 31, the figures now only represent desperation and death; one death in particular, but also the fear that more might follow.

"I try not to eat too much so there is enough food for my children, but even if I ate nothing there wouldn't be enough," she said. "I didn't think it was possible that people could starve in Zimbabwe or just die because the hospital has nothing. That's what we thought happened in Angola and Mozambique."

Chekani's home in Highfield, a crowded township on the edge of Harare, is bare. There are no chairs, only cloths on the floor. No bed, just a mattress for her and the two remaining children, boys of seven and eight.

She has a gas hob but no oven, and the only decoration is a print of a Jesus Christ - a white man with a golden halo.

It wasn't always this way. Chekani and her husband were relatively poor, but his labours as a casual construction worker and her trading in secondhand clothes filled their three-roomed home with the things that marked rising living standards in Zimbabwe after independence: a radio and then a television, a couch, armchairs, a bed.

Then, five years ago, shortly after the birth of her only daughter, Chekani's husband died. She says she doesn't know why - he just got sicker, and nothing could save him.

By then, his work had dried up as the economy crashed under Mugabe's maladministration, and they were selling off their belongings to those who still had means. The television fetched enough money to feed the family for a month. The bed went for almost nothing. Chekani even sold off most of her plates and cutlery, keeping only what the family needed for a meal.

With the money, she did what large numbers of Zimbabweans are doing to survive: she bought up basic foods, keeping some for her family and making a small profit from the rest.

There is almost nothing left in the house to sell, but Chekani gets by. Her latest acquisition is two litres of cooking oil which she sells at a pavement stall, five tablespoons at a time, in return for a handful of near worthless notes. Other women are selling bars of soap by the slice and flour by the cup.

But cash isn't something you keep for very long with 100,000% inflation and the Zimbabwe dollar diving from 15m to the pound a month ago to about 50m today as the government furiously prints money to fund pay rises for the army and civil servants in advance of the March 29 general election.

Dealing with cash is like a torrid game of pass the parcel. Everyone wants it but then unloads it as quickly as possible in exchange for something worth having. Chekani gets rid of the money from selling her oil by buying two eggs. Sometimes the police and soldiers take the street hawkers' wares, claiming it is illegal to sell on the pavement. The women say it is another form of state looting.

Chekani's trading kept her children alive until last November. Then her five-year-old daughter fell sick with diarrhoea and fever. Chekani hesitated to take her to Highfield's government clinic because charges have risen several times over, but as the child's condition worsened she carried her there.

The nurse said there was nothing she could do. There were no antibiotics to treat the child's condition. All she could offer was a spoonful of syrup to help bring her temperature down.

"The nurse said she was sure she would be fine. She said lots of children were coming in with diarrhoea because of the sewers," said Chekani.

Burst sewer lines are increasingly common in Highfield and other Harare townships as the infrastructure collapses from lack of maintenance. On occasion, groups of women with babies strapped to their backs have marched to Highfield clinic to demand treatment for their children, sick from the filthy water.

The situation is not helped by months without clean water in the taps in most of Harare. Even residents of wealthy suburbs are collecting water in buckets and jerry cans from borehole stand pipes. Swimming pools are now mostly used for water to flush toilets.

Chekani's child did not get better. "I took her back to the clinic three times," she said, "but every time they said that she would get better soon if I give her food and lots of water - that it was just the fever and there was nothing they could do because they had no drugs.

"I thought about taking her to the Harare central hospital, but it costs so much money and people said things are no better there. I just hoped."

A week later the child was dead.

The death rate for children under five in Zimbabwe has almost doubled over the past decade. So has the number of women dying in childbirth because, doctors say, so many more are giving birth at home because they can no longer afford hospital charges.

There is a desperate shortage of vaccines to protect children from measles and other diseases. Thanks to foreign donations, some of those with HIV get antiretroviral drugs to keep full-blown Aids at bay, but most who need them do not, and the supply is often irregular, which undermines their effectiveness.

The biggest government hospital in Harare, the Parirenyatwa, has ceased operations because of the shortages. The two hospitals share a single radiologist because so many medical staff have decamped to South Africa or Europe to find work that can feed their families.

That is not an option for Chekani.

"I don't know what to do if my other children get sick. Where can we go? The hospital tells you to buy the drugs yourself, but where do I get the money?" she said. "Some people say this election will change things. I don't know. I don't have hope. It will not bring back the dead."