Public health services in Zimbabwe have deteriorated on the back of a deepening economic crisis. The government in Harare introduced ox-drawn ambulances to ferry ill people to health centres in some remote rural areas, according to the online news service Zim-Online. The ox-drawn carts - which health officials said were a desperate measure because there was no money to repair broken down ambulances or buy new ones – were introduced after the National Railways company of Zimbabwe in 2004 also brought back steam locomotives of the 1950s because it could not afford to run its modern electric and diesel locomotives anymore. Fuel costs increased badly and petrol and diesel are hardly available. People have reverted to walking to work in larger towns. Zimbabwe’s economic decline, which the World Bank has said is unprecedented in a country not at war, saw inflation surging beyond 350 %.