A Flaxmere couple featured in Hawke's Bay Today's Fighting Poverty campaign are overwhelmed after returning from Auckland, where their daughter received cancer treatment, to find their home full of donated gifts.
When Sharon and Vili Malaitai last spoke to Hawke's Bay Today, they were preparing to leave on 10-day trip to Auckland so that their 4-year-old daughter Sienna could undergo chemotherapy treatment at Starship Hospital. She had recently been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of blood cancer.
Then living in a household of 15, the hard-working Malaitai family told Hawke's Bay Today how they managed to put food on the table for 10 children as part of the Fighting Poverty campaign.
In Auckland, the family were told Sienna's cancer was stage three, which they hadn't expected, Ms Malaitai said.
"It was all the way through her body."