Secret Lives: Memory, 30, has Aids. She will see out her final days in this rural hospital surrounded by other woman also dying of the same illness. Women's life expectancy has dropped from 65 a decade ago to 34 now, the lowest in the world. The government only has enough antiretroviral drugs to treat 30,000 of its estimated 3 million HIV positive citizens. NGOs try to make up the shortfall, but the government is making it increasingly difficult for them to work. Zimbabwe. May 2007

Photograph: Robin Hammond/Observer Magazine