Trek For Parkinsons 2025 will head off to Nepal on 19 April, once again to raise much needed awareness and funds for Parkinsons Disease research in Australia.
Sunshine Coast allied health assistant Gary Mckitterick Gillett will once again lead, this time with a much larger group of 23, yes 23 people, all with a connection to Parkinsons, and aged from 21 to 73 years.
While Gary works in health, for Queensland Health, some of his trekkers also come from the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.
One of them is Russell McKenzie, a very fit and active 73 year old who is joining the group to help Shake it Up Australia to make the lives of people with Parkinsons that much better.
Russell has the lived experience of having a wife with Parkinsons disease, and we know people with PD are prone to falls, and yes it happened, Gary said. “But thanks to the wonderful work and support of the Parkinsons Centre at Forest Glen. Plus a lot of perseverance and resilience, she is on the mend.”
How did the group come together?
“Well, the Parkinsons conference at the Maroochy RSL was the catalyst that brought us all together, as I was MC for the event,” Gary said.
“This generated much discussion and publicity and people making decisions, that a Nepal challenge to 5416m was a small sacrifice to make to help solve the Parkinsons puzzle. We won’t stop until we have a solution.”
Trek For Parkinsons 2025 is a collaboration between The Silver Fox Initiative and Trek Ready Himalayas. Due the effects of PD on people mental health, it is a very natural collaboration.
Parkinsons is the second most common neurological disease in Australia after dementia.
The disease effects an estimated 10 million individuals world wide and over 150,000 in Australia.
Thirty-eight Aussies are diagnosed each day
Twenty per cent of sufferers are under 50 and 10 per cent are under 40 years.
To help solve the PD puzzle and donate to the Trek for Parkinsons visit our-fundraisers.raisely.com/everesttrek2025
