An Auckland boy born with a rare blood disease went through primary school thinking he’d die early. But as Michael Morrah reports, staff at Kidz First Children’s Hospital and Starship Hospital kept him alive - until eventually there was a breakthrough.
As a young boy, Mitioti Fariu didn’t understand what was wrong with him but became accustomed to the idea that death was imminent.
His early life was entwined with hospital visits, injections and blood transfusions – normal childhood fun was exhausting and often left him breathless.
“I think I felt somewhat embarrassed because I wasn’t like the other kids. I couldn’t run around for as long as the cuzzies and bros,” he said.
In the back of his mind during the constant treatments, he recalls thinking “I’m going to die anyway”.
Fariu was born with the rare and life-threatening disease Diamond Blackfan Anaemia (DBA) – a condition that stops the body from making red blood cells, and which starves organs and muscles of oxygen.
To counter the lack of oxygen, he needed monthly blood transfusions – a process that itself was potentially lethal because transfusions can cause iron to accumulate in the body and damage the heart and liver.
If that wasn’t complicated enough, DBA also increased the likelihood of Fariu getting cancer.
“I just wanted to be a little boy running around outside with the homies and just doing what little boys do. So having to go to the hospital definitely was hard for me because I didn’t want to accept it,” he said.
“I’ve been told my whole young life that I wouldn’t survive past this age or that age.”
Fast-forward to today, Fariu, a driver for Mr Chips, is a healthy 37-year-old with his own family – surviving against the odds thanks to the expert intervention of specialists at Middlemore’s Kidz First Children’s Hospital and Starship Hospital.
His right forearm bears the name of his 17-year-old daughter – Reynona – etched in ink.
“I’m just thankful for everybody who was there for me and helped me through it all from the age of four months old as a baby. I stopped going to the hospital at the age of 18, and I’ve never been back to the hospital since,” he said.
Such was the peculiarity of his condition, Fariu featured in a 2002 television documentary series – then aged 11 – which followed his journey as a patient at Kidz First and Starship.
Video from the series shows him cautiously drawing up medication to counter the iron overload under guidance from a Kidz First community nurse at his grandmother’s home in Papatoetoe.
Kidz First, which marks its 25th anniversary this year, has dedicated paediatric and public nursing teams that visit chronically ill children at home.
Fariu, originally from Rarotonga, has seven brothers and two sisters, and said when the family learned of his condition, his grandmother – now deceased – stepped in to ease the burden on his parents and ensure he took his medication.
“Definitely she was a legend. She was a hard lady sometimes but a bloody lovable lady all the time,” Fariu recalled.
Just when he thought the daily injections would be an ongoing and necessary part of survival, a breakthrough came thanks to one of his brothers.
“I had a couple of bone marrow transplants. I was fortunate enough that one of my brothers was a perfect match with the cells and everything, so he donated his bone marrow for me,” he said.
He said his brother – who was primary school aged at the time – was scared and reluctant about going through the procedure but got on with it after gentle encouragement from family.
“He was scared to go through that, but our parents told him [why it was critical],” he said.
Fariu needed chemotherapy before the bone marrow transplant which he recalled made him “real sick”.
The procedure was a success and Fariu is grateful for his family’s support, the Kidz First team, and Dr Lochie Teague from Starship’s paediatric blood and cancer centre.
He said the way medical staff relayed information to him as a child and “spoke to me in my way of speaking” helped him understand and ultimately trust the process.
“Definitely got a lot of gratitude. If it wasn’t for those fellas [the doctors and nurses], I probably wouldn’t even be here, bro.
“Because they told me there was no kid that survived my illness past the age of 15. Now I’m 37 sitting there talking to you, that’s definitely a lot of gratitude for that, bro.”
Click here to donate to the Kidz First Children’s Hospital 25th Birthday Appeal. Donors make a difference through things like Jammies for June, home-safe ketes containing essential items to keep children safe at home, mobility aids, glasses and hearing support, and the annual Kidz First Christmas party.
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won News Journalist of the Year at the 2025 Voyager Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year at the NZ Television Awards. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald’s video team in July 2024.