Community Man, Ben Wilson, Needs Our Support

In January 2025, at just 39 years old, he was diagnosed with stage 4 ALK positive lung cancer.

A funeral director, celebrant, and Deputy Chief Fire Officer of the Tuakau Volunteer Fire Brigade, Ben has spent around 20 years serving his community. He’s also a dad, fiancé to Emma, a son, brother and a down to earth kiwi bloke.

Despite the diagnosis, Ben has continued working, volunteering and living life as normally as possible. But his cancer treatment has now reached a point where the medicine giving him his best chance of keeping the cancer under control is not publicly funded in New Zealand.

Ben and Emma are now personally funding this drug Lorlatinib at considerable cost.

Setting up this page is something Ben and Emma have wrestled with. Asking for help doesn’t come naturally, particularly when Ben has spent so much of his working and volunteering life helping other families through some of their hardest days. But cancer changes things.

Ben has become increasingly vocal about a system that leaves New Zealanders having to find enormous sums of money simply to access medicines that could give them more time. His advocacy isn’t just about himself. It’s about the patients and families who come after him too.

Through all of this, Ben remains the same community-minded bloke he has always been - working, volunteering, and trying to make the most of ordinary family life.

For years, Ben has been there when his community needed him. Maybe now, he needs a bit of help in return