Winter is in full bloom now, not a time of the year that I really enjoy but one has little choice in the matter. The Asia and South Pacific Ostomy Association held its last conference in Singapore in late 2023 and right now we are working on getting our next one in 2026 organised and have a number of Associations in the mix
From a local (Bay of Plenty NZ) point of view the local society has run a number of display days in local shopping malls which have worked really well by letting members of the public see that we are there and what we do and I have included a photo of our stand.interestingly enough we found that many young people knew all about ostomies as they had seen them on Tick Tock! We send our members a newsletter, mainly by email, every month so that people know what is coming up.
Friends of Ostomates World Wide New Zealand Charitable Trust has started sending surplus ostomy products to Asia again after a break during Covid and right now we are preparing pallets initially for Indonesia but will be looking at other countries shortly. This is a very small scale operation set up by Barry Maugham and myself working mainly out of our home garages and dependant on donations for freight payments.
On the National scene, Ostomy New Zealand continues to send out their magazine The New Zealand Ostomate, to all Ostomates three times a year. The NZ government has put in place new laws around the governance of not for profit bodies and we have all had to update out constitutions in line with new incorporated societies guidelines and re-register all of our associations and societies. While this may have caused a bit of trouble for some small groups in the main things have worked out well. New Zealand is a relatively small country and has around 7500 Ostomates at any one time and as the supply of appliances is handled by the government via the local hospitals, due to the privacy act, it is impossible to get a really accurate number of Ostomates however we have come up with the above figure through a number of ways and it does seem to be fairly accurate.
By: Richard McNair (07/25/24)
