Chiefs assistant coach Andrew Strawbridge is keen to give back to the Samoan hospital that treated him after almost dying from an eye infection while there for the historic All Blacks Test in Apia.
Strawbridge has recounted his ordeal with wife Laura telling Fairfax Media it was "touch and go".
"On the Wednesday morning [Manu Samoa coach] Alama Ieremia called me and he said Andrew's in ICU. Then I spoke to Wayne Smith and he said Andrew's in ICU and you're coming over today," Laura said.
"Then I spoke to the doctor and he said 'you need to get over here right now'."
Laura was put on the next flight to Samoa by New Zealand Rugby and was with her husband at Moto'otua National Hospital within hours.
Strawbridge couldn't remember much of his illness which started off as a scratch to his eye which became infected and thrived in the low pressure of the plane flight to Apia for the New Zealand-Samoa Test in July.
"I remember part of the flight over and feeling sick on the way over, getting the shakes and having to go and see a stewardess," Andrew said.
"There was a doctor on the plane who came and saw me, and then being picked up by the ambulance as I stepped off the plane, going to the hospital and then being sent back to the hotel that we were staying at.
"I remember being violently ill there, then going to sleep and I don't remember anything since.
"For a few weeks I was just living in a different universe."
Strawbridge now wants to give back to Dr Dave Galler and his medical team at the hospital's Intensive Care Unit.
Laura and a friend began to raise money for Andrew while he was still in care through a Givealittle page which had a target of $50,000.
Having already reached that point, Andrew wants to raise another $30,000.
"The hospital has very little," Laura Strawbridge said.
"I was really shocked when I walked in, first of all at the state of Andrew, but also the state of the machines that they work with, the sheer number of nurses that they have to have because the machines are so unreliable.
"The first night I was there were no sheets to make up a bed for me, so Dave Galler had to go and get some surgery greens and we made up a kind of makeshift bed, not that I slept.
"That kind of speaks to the basic things they're doing. You go into the Waikato ICU and there are rooms full of everything they need."
Strawbridge, who won't ever be able to see out of his right eye again, described the mortality rate of the ICU as "brutal".
"Brutally, it's just an unacceptable mortality rate in their IC unit - just unacceptable in this day and age. It's 90 percent, and that's children, people's husbands, people's wives. That shouldn't happen this close to home.
"That's been the motivating factor. I woke up to this [fundraising effort], so I don't take any credit for this at all, but it's very significant."
The money raised is for medical equipment at the hospital while any extra funds will go into an ongoing educational scholarship for doctors and nurses.
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