Last Friday Untenu has sent money for food supply and medical aid for Pisith. Today we raise money for his funeral. HIV in Cambodia has a different face than in the Western world.
Life can be hard, especially if you are poor, gay and living with HIV. In recent weeks, we regularly receive requests for assistance. The latest was for Pisith, a young gay man, living with HIV.
Pisith was his name, he was in his early twenties. Lived together under poor circumstances with is mum in Banteay Meanchey,a remote province in the northwest of Cambodia.
He worked as a cleaner ind a karaoke club. He used drugs. Weather that was the reason he stopped using his ARV or not, we simply don’t know. He became so ill that he was hospitalized, although his mother and friends could not afford it.
At the same time we heard the terrible news that the volunteers of the National MSM & TG Network came too late for another young gay man. He passed away before they could arrange emergency support.
The volunteer of the National MSM & TG Network brought Pisith food and paid some hospital bills. One day later he died because there was no blood for a blood transfusion.
It is always difficult to distinguish from such a distance the exact cause and effect. But everyone deserves a decent funeral. Therefore, we now raise money to pay for his cremation and a Buddhist ceremony.
You can contribute by donating money directly via PayPal. Please click on the button below:
You can also transfer money to our International Bank Account Number (IBAN) NL62 TRIO 0390 999 229 Attn. Stichting Untenu (Untenu Foundation), Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
The Dutch tax authorities consider Untenu Foundation to be a ‘public-benefit organization’. On the basis of their evaluation, we were designated an ‘ANBI’ (ANBI stands for ‘Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling’ = a public-benefit organization). As a result, private persons in the Netherlands can deduct their sponsoring from their income tax. Read more (in English) on the website of the Dutch Tax Authority, please click here.