The results of yesterday's annual World AIDS Day national collection may be known as early as this Wednesday and certainly by the end of this coming week. Over two hundred collectors hit the streets and shopping malls yesterday, according to The NZ AIDS Foundation's General Manager Operations, Nick Laing. Laing says the dodgy weather in Auckland and Wellington yesterday morning "definitely hampered" the collection of funds to help support the needs of people living with HIV. He says the Wellington collectors near the train station "had their usual good morning especially with donations from commuter." And there are early indications that the Wellington collectors may have raised more money than their Auckland counterparts. In Christchurch more World AIDS Day collectors were on the streets this year than for several years past. Until now it had become noticeable that with the disrupted lives and changed movements of people around the city due to the devastation caused by the earthquakes it has been difficult to mount an appeal there during the past three years. Laing says one of the gratifying things of being involved in the collection is that "it's a good reminder of the journey people have gone through due to HIV and AIDS and the number of people who have been touched in various ways. " He says he was especially moved when a west Indian woman talked about her cousin who had passed away due to HIV. "She said she wishes that they had been in New Zealand when he was unwell as the access to medications here is much better than they had in their home country and she thinks he would probably still be alive if he had been here." "Another woman talked about a male family member and the discrimination the family had faced in the early 1980s and about health professionals at that time not knowing too much about what was going on and being openly frightened of working with him."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 29th November 2014 - 7:09pm