Farewelling Fred
A pillar of the Hepatitis SA community retires
F
red Robertson has been beloved by all at Hepatitis SA for more than 22 years. When he retired at the end of July this year he was my right hand. He was known to the clients of various services as the ‘Chupa Chup Man’ because he handed out Chupa Chups to those who stopped to chat with him about viral hepatitis transmission, testing and treatment over the years. His colleagues know him as an all-round great guy. Whenever anything was asked of him, the word ‘no’ was not in his vocabulary. He was wonderful to work with and his well-earned retirement is a great loss to Hepatitis SA. When asked recently what he liked most about his work, Fred told me that he felt that the people he worked with were like family to him. He commenced as a volunteer at what was then known as the Hepatitis C Council of South Australia in 1998 by working
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on the phone helpline, and his role evolved to Peer Mentor after about 8 years. He supervised a team of peer educators, working with a number of coordinators, during that time. I remember that I first met Fred when I attended workforce development training about blood-borne viruses 17 years ago. I crossed paths with him many times in a professional capacity, as he attended a variety of my workplaces to provide peer education and information to the clients, and I always found him to be the most affable fellow. When I joined Hepatitis SA as the Coordinator of his team 8 years ago he was the most valuable worker that I have ever had the great pleasure to work with. Speaking about his role, Fred explained that he found his work as Peer Educator very rewarding, enjoying the fact that he got to witness the health of clients improve after being cured of hepatitis C and hearing their gratitude for being informed about
HEPATITIS SA COMMUNITY NEWS 87 • September 2020
the latest treatments from someone with a lived experience of hepatitis C. He said that he did his job for the satisfaction that he felt from being a part of the facilitation of the improvement of people’s health. Fred personally lived with hepatitis C for 20 years, first attempting Interferon treatment in 1996 before finally achieving a cure with a second attempt on the old Interferon and Ribavirin combination therapy in the year 2000. He recalls that, for many, “Interferon treatment had some very nasty side effects such as flu-like symptoms, hair loss, depression and anxiety—to name just a few—and the duration was for either 6 or 12 months depending on which genotype of hepatitis C one was infected with.” He said that he was glad when he was eventually able to promote the Direct-Acting Antiviral (DAA) treatments, saying, “It is so great that the new treatments are just one or two tablets per day for just 8 or 12 weeks,” and how he saw the new DAA treatment for hepatitis C improve even
