The work you do keeps me alive

The work you do keeps me alive

A personal experience of metastatic disease, unfunded medication, going public and living on borrowed time.

Hilary Chung has recently been in the media contributing to the on-going campaign for the public funding of drugs for advanced breast cancer which are the internationally recognised standard treatment for her disease. She will tell her own story of diagnosis, prognosis, private fundraising and her experience of the full range of treatments and their side effects, and the implications of being in the public spotlight. Questions and discussion are encouraged.

Dr Hilary Chung is the founding director of the Global Studies programme which she continues to run and develop. She is a former Associate Dean and Head of School (Asian Studies). Her area of research is Comparative Literature. She speaks six languages and works and teaches in comparative cultural studies.

She has been living with breast cancer since 2015, and with metastatic disease since 2017. She raised over $66,000 to pay for the drug Palbociclib (Ibrance) which is not funded in New Zealand.

This talk is part of the 2019 ABI Tuesday Seminar Series. The seminars are all open to the public, and there will be a new talk each Tuesday, from 4-5pm, held at the Auckland Bioengineering House, 70 Symonds St.

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