SHE does not like the description but Lynde Francis, who was privately educated in Britain, is a walking miracle.

Nineteen years ago she was diagnosed with HIV and given three years to live. Then three years ago she was bitten by a baby cobra. She spent eight weeks in a coma, during which her vital organs stopped functioning. Her daughter was asked for approval to switch off the life-support machine.

Yet Francis, 57, survived to become an inspiration for thousands of fellow HIV carriers in Zimbabwe, which has one of the world’s highest rates of Aids but one of the lowest levels of international assistance.

The first woman in Zimbabwe to go public with her HIV-positive status, she was shunned by family and friends and attacked by the church. She pulled herself back from the verge of suicide, determined to show it was possible to live with Aids, and set up an organisation called the Centre.

It is based in a sprawling house in Harare where all the staff are HIV-positive. A combination of nutrition, traditional herbs and positive thinking has achieved remarkable survival rates in a country where more than 3,000 people die each week from Aids-related diseases.

A quarter of Zimbabwe’s 12.6m population is infected with the virus that causes Aids, and life expectancy has fallen to 33. But average funding per victim is just £2.12 a year, compared with £41.38 in the rest of southern Africa, because donors are reluctant to give to a country ruled by a despot.

The success of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party in last month’s parliamentary elections, which were widely thought to have been rigged, has left the outlook bleak for Zimbabwe’s millions of Aids sufferers. Although Mugabe is expected to step down in 2008, no end is in sight to the severe food shortage caused by his land reform programme, which destroyed commercial farming. Widespread malnutrition has reduced people’s ability to fight disease.

The economic collapse, combined with the diversion of state resources to agencies of repression such as the secret police, has left hospitals that used to be among the best in Africa unable to afford medicines. For many HIV carriers, projects such as the Centre are the only hope.

Among those waiting in the shade of avocado trees to see counsellors at the Centre last week were a polite young couple in their early thirties. Dressed in their best clothes, they were still in shock from being diagnosed last month.

“It was terrible,” said Bernard, a caddy at the Royal Harare golf club, as his wife Anna sat with her hands in her lap and eyes downcast.

“The doctor told us there’s nothing you can do. The state doesn’t provide (anti-retroviral drugs) and we can’t afford them. But we have two children of 13 and 8 and we want to live long enough to help them finish their schooling.”

Francis, he added, had “shown us it is possible to live”.

Francis, whose sing-song accent is an indicator of her British mother and Trinidadian father, grew up in London and was educated at — and expelled from — a succession of girls’ schools, including Bedales. She moved to what was then Rhodesia in 1970 to marry a musician. In 1986 he underwent one of the country’s first Aids tests. The result was positive.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• It’s only Brits who don’t appreciate me, says Blair
• Party’s over for Greek graspers
• White House tightens security for Xmas marathon