"I'm just back from Zambia", says Dr Dorothy Logie. On the living-room table, a pile of reports draw the bleak picture of the HIV-AIDS epidemic in this Eastern African country. One out of five young adults infected. Over one million adults and children tested HIV positive. About 21,000 children become infected each year through mother-to-child transmission.

"People just see members of their family dying, their neighbours dying, everybody dying, explains Dorothy, And it's young people, it's teachers and doctors, it's nurses particularly. It's affecting everyone. And people can't do their work now. You come to see me today, but in Zambia, you might not turn up because you're ill. You know, the teacher doesn't turn up for the class... so things aren't working anymore.

I don't think the outside world realizes how huge the effects are..."

Which makes Dorothy's dedication even more remarkable. She travelled seven hours by bus on a risky journey (20 people died in a road accident in the bus following hers) to go and help the people her husband treated as a volunteer physician in 1993.

"I visited the Saint Francis' Hospital, and part of it is the AIDS clinic named after my late husband", Dorothy Logie explains. Dr Sandy Logie died of AIDS at the age of 63 in 2001.

"When he died, there was a lot of interest in the Scottish Borders because he was well known : he'd been the senior physician at the Borders General Hospital ; we'd lived in the area for 27 years. So I made an appeal for money and money came flowing in. St Francis' Hospital was able to start the Sandy Logie clinic about 18 months ago. Before that, all patients with AIDS were seen at the general medical clinic. They find the special clinic can offer more." The Sandy Logie fund also sends medicine twice a year. The clinic is held on a Monday, and helps about 200 AIDS patients.

The money raised in the Borders (with the help of the SBAAG -Scottish Borders Africa AIDS Group-) also goes towards prevention and development in this rural area of Eastern Zambia. "Saint Francis in Katete acts as the back up for what is now a whole cascade of programs (youth drama, prevention, millet meals, orphan support, income generation) run through the villages via the local chiefs right down to the Zambian people. It's supported by a whole army of home-based volunteers."

Prevention works : the percentage of 15 to 19 year-olds tested HIV positive is decreasing (slightly) since the mid-1990s.

But the needs are still "huge", insists Dorothy. Even if there was no new infections, there would still be hundreds of thousands of Zambians to treat in the years to come.

"They need antibiotics and drugs to fight opportunistic infections (fungal infections, tuberculosis, all the infections that people with lower immunity get). Thats the main supply of drugs that we send out."

They also need pain control. It might sound unbelievable, but they've only got paracetamol. "I've been absolutely shocked.", recalls Dorothy, "I've gone to villages with the outreach team and young people are just lying on the floor on a piece of cloth, not even on a mat. They're in a lot of pain, they're dying and the team gives out this handful of paracetamol... It's not really good enough."

And, of course, they need antiretroviral drugs. "In this very rural area, people have to be able to pay for them. For some reason, this hospital has not managed to access the cheap generic drugs. They're buying the labelled drugs and I think the cost to this clinic is actually three times that of what they could be purchased for in the capital Lusaka."

Another piece of the intricate puzzle that is the everyday fight against AIDS in Zambia: generic drugs are available, but only in  pockets of the country, through specific testing or research programs.

Even if you do get the antiretroviral drugs, as 9 out of 192 AIDS patients do in the Sandy Logie clinic, it might not mean you'll feel much better. "They are complex drugs with side effects", Dr Logie explains, "You have to be careful, some of them fight with anti-tuberculosis drugs and many people are co-infected. And the virus can become resistant to the drug very easily : All you need to do is miss one or two doses and you can develop resistance. That's why it's really really important that people take the drugs regularly and that the drugs are of good quality. So there's a need of training in the actual delivery of the drug. They (the staff) need laboratory support, laboratory knowledge, they need to know how to use and how to handle these drugs."

The clinic needs much more trained staff. There is a shortage of trained volunteers at all times. But the cruel reality of the fight against AIDS is that a lot of doctors and nurses themselves die of the disease. This is what happened to Dr Sandy Logie. "He went to Saint Francis' Hospital to work as a physician and through an accident in a ward he became infected with HIV. He came back to Scotland and died in 2001."

"My family say : don't go and let what happened to Dad happen to you.

Dorothy looks over the living-room table at the pictures of her children on the wall. She will avoid what she calls "the really hot end of clinical work" : delivering babies , taking blood, putting up drips, which is how her husband contracted the disease.

She wants to teach, speak, lobby and fundraise in the UK. She wants to work in palliative care in Katete. To give proper pain relief rather than paracetamol. To offer alternative therapies. To extend the clinic to day care.

Dr Logies name. Dr Logies mind. They have not left Zambia.

If you wish to help, please e-mail Dorothy Logie : DeLogie@aol.com.