A mother who tragically lost two sons to Aids has launched a personal mission to help thousands of young victims of the disease.

Zebunissa Cooke, 51, left her home in the central African state of Malawi in 1984 after marrying a British man.

She desperately wanted to bring her six sons and a daughter with her to their new home in Newcastle.

But her two elder sons, Ricky and Edward, decided to stay behind - a decision that would cost them their lives.

Mrs Cooke received a phone call ten years later to tell her Ricky, then 26, had contracted Aids and only had a few months to live.

She said: "I knew nothing about the disease at the time, I knew of the name, but I didn't know what it did and the terrible suffering and pain it caused. "I flew out there straight away and I can still remember the emotion of arriving and seeing him.

"There were so many others like him, lying in squalid beds and with no painkillers or medicine in the searing heat.

"I felt exactly what any mother would have felt upon seeing their child lying there, dying.

"The awful thing was that I couldn't touch him as people said I would catch the disease as well. It sounds stupid now, but that is what people thought."

Mrs Cooke saw Ricky die and just 18 months later she was told her other son, Edward, 29, also had the disease.

She nursed Edward until his death in 1996 when she decided to dedicate her life to helping other sufferers.

She said: "Their deaths were hard for all of us, but by working to ease the suffering of others I feel as though I am also helping Ricky and Edward."