Welcome to Post-Viral Research Aotearoa!
Thank you for visiting our website. I appreciate it. Here’s a little bit of background:
We started this organisation in 2022 to spearhead biomedical research into post-viral illnesses, namely Long Covid and ME/CFS. This decision was spurred by firsthand experience of the neglect surrounding these illnesses, and the dire urgency for action.
For starters, our lead researcher, cellular immunologist Dr Anna Brooks, quickly became the country’s leading expert on Long Covid, having given several dozens of interviews on the subject to news outlets across the spectrum. Despite this widespread media attention and recognition, there has been no money put toward biomedical research into Long Covid by the New Zealand government. Government funding bodies are risk averse, and the only funding they have put toward Long Covid is for a survey. Meanwhile, Long Covid is causing immense human suffering and colossal damage to the economy, as people are too sick to work, or even live any semblance of a functioning life. There are no treatments or cures, and support is incredibly hard to come by.
PVRA’s other co-founders are Long Covid and ME/CFS patients ourselves, and have had to become experts in our illnesses due to the absence of medical knowledge and support available to us. We’ve become immersed in the Long Covid and ME/CFS communities, and witnessed both the longstanding hardship that patients have been through, but also the resilience and fortitude they’ve shown to keep up the fight. We’ve watched in disbelief as these illnesses, which have such huge disease burdens that they often leave people completely bed-bound, have been psychologised and misrepresented.
For ME/CFS patients, some of this hardship has lasted literal decades. The emergence of Long Covid has finally exposed the negligence of the medical industry, as the rest of the world discovers that these patients are left without a modicum of care or support. That said, Long Covid also provides the potential springboard to rapidly accelerate understanding in this area, so that patients need not suffer for more decades to come.
PVRA is special in the sense that the researchers and patients have teamed up over a joint goal to seek concrete action that will work to relieve this suffering, through biomedical research.
We’ve got the passion and the equipment, we now just need the funding. We’ll pursue this through all avenues available to us. We’re grateful for any support or leads that you could offer.
As for this blog, we’ll be using it to post updates on research (both conducted by us and others), fundraising, and on anything else that may be of interest to readers.
It’s past time for post-viral illnesses, and those afflicted by them, to get the attention and care that they deserve.
RB