People with M.E. symptoms should not wait to get better but MUST urgently seek help – to ‘catch' their illness before it develops into something more serious.
For our Big Give Christmas Challenge this year, the ME Association hopes to raise £25,000 online to pay for a campaign for early and accurate diagnosis. And we want to pitch that fairly and squarely at the UK's family doctors.
In order to reach this ambitious target, we first need to have £5000-worth of pledges in place from people of goodwill. These will be used during the appeal in December to match public donations pound-for-pound.
The campaign itself will launch next May – during ME Awareness Week – with printed materials being posted to GPs, a video explaining why we're running the campaign and a seminar later in the year that will explore its themes. We have also asked for a BBC Radio 4 appeal to back us up.
Could you offer us a pledge – which could be for as little as £100 – and let us have your promise by October 16?
We don't want your money at this stage. Just your promises! And we shan't actually ask for your money until after the appeal has closed on December 14.
If enough people donate bang on the button at 12 noon on the first two days – December 4 and 5 – money from a ‘Charity Champions’ fund will be released which could give us the full £25,000 – enough to get material into every single GP surgery throughout the land.
For more details about the appeal, please click HERE.
And if you’d like to make your pledge now, the link to the pledging form is HERE.
Thank you… from the bottom of our hearts. We shall be providing regular updates and fresh information about this important challenge.
This sounds a really good idea, but what are the chances that GPs will take any notice? Especially the dinosaur doctors who still think M.E. doesn’t exist – and that the earth is flat.
We have to try to educate medics, of course, but I will be surprised if anybody apart from the already well-informed will take any notice. I very much hope I’m wrong.
Morning, John
Thankfully, some of us have an optimistic streak!
And we’ve seen with similar exercises in the past – particularly with respect to our Purple Booklet circulations – that this material is not binned by every GP.
Tony
Greetings, Tony
As I said, we have to try to improve matters; and not being a complete pessimist 🙂 I’ll be chipping in as usual.
Thanks for all the good work you do on our behalf.