That’s great news. Very worthy and necessary. I wonder if Helen Tyrell and the like will support this initiative.

A friend sent me this article from The Age this morning. Good points well made.

http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/-glamtm.html

For the present time, I want my donations to be applied as per my post (below) in a previous thread –

In 2014 when the Govt approved simeprevir and declined sofosbuvir on “cost effectiveness” grounds – they immorally failed to overtly disclose that this decision effectively warehoused the most high risk patients who could not medically tolerate the simeprevir/IFN treatment – and were literally being left to die. For all the vanity this country projects about its benign social orientation – I still remain appalled that this fact is so overlooked and under-reported. Despite the public victim blaming – most informed citizens would not see this as the “australian” way.
I would be happy to contribute to a fighting fund to provide insufficiently resourced individuals who comprise this high risk group with treatment – I would like to know that on our watch we have tried to care for those in most need. There are clever people on this team whom can surely find a way to structure this without compromising our “existing” services. Doc James and his excellent team have created a compassionate and well executed social endeavour – I would like to see members honour its purpose in this way. Many of us aren’t personally well resourced but having found the funds to treat ourselves perhaps we can each dig a little deeper. Christmas might be a good time to juggle some priorities and seed the fund. It need not be ambitious but to have a little help on hand for those who can’t afford treatment seems a good caring of each other. ”

But I found the “give now”, Shaw Foundation,TasCard and Aids/Hep overlays confusing – so I am not clear whether the funds I donate will go toward making generics available to HepC sufferers or not. I will assume they do – and just accept that I have again fallen victim to my usual intolerance for completion of forms of any kind.

So advanced with HepC my probability of success may be more compromised than general statistics suggest – but at least I was able to choose whether I throw the dice. I will never forget the horror, so recently, of having a life threatening disease with no hope of treatment due to big Pharma greed – it appals me how many people out there are experiencing such powerlessness.

DAMN. I have just read Doc James post – earlier I was just looking for anything titled “charity” or “donation” so I could post. Apologies for wasting your time – I failed to put FixhepC in “other”, and don’t know how to amend it. Will see if I can “contact” them tomorrow.

Hi Archer,

As Paul says I’m sure if you contact them they’ll be happy to correct it.

I must admit I had to flick back and forth between their site and the instructions here to make sure I got it right. And then check that the total on the thermometer went up by the same amount just to be sure.

Perhaps one of the mods could insert a step by step walk-though with pics into this thread under the Doc’s post assuming the Andrew Shaw Foundation has no objections?

G

Hi Em,

I’ll try to walk you through process.

– click on the “givenow” link at the bottom of the Doc’s post.
– note $ thermometer showing how much we have donated so far and note that quantity.
– scroll to bottom of page and select one of the options. I chose “Give a one off donation online”
– enter quantity you want to donate. Scroll down and select the “my giving” option you want. I chose “Don’t use my giving”
– click “continue”
– complete personal details. Click “pay by credit card”
– click on “leave a message why donation is important to you”
– click “other”
– Type in “Fixhepc”
– click “continue”
– enter credit card details etc
– click, I think it was “make donation”
– go back to front page and check $ thermometer has gone up by amount of your donation.*

* if the increase was different from what you donated you won’t be able to tell whether yours went through or it was someone else so you better do it again.***

G

*** did you see what I just did there?

Hmmm

I made a donation but didn’t take note of the $ thermometer (damn!) but pretty sure I had ‘fixHepC’ nominated correctly, so here’s hoping. The confirmation of donation email doesn’t stipulate where the money was directed, specifically.