Lives at risk as drug prices soar in crisis-hit Zimbabwe Since starting treatment five years ago, 50-year-old Alice Chenyika kept her blood pressure under control by adhering to doctors' strict instructions to take two daily doses of nifedipine. Now Zimbabwe's worsening economic crisis has pushed prices up, and the medicine is far beyond her reach -- one of many signs of Zimbabwe's painful transition since the fall of Robert Mugabe a year ago this month.