By David Webster & Hollie Cole
BBC News
Extracts
People with ME have been protesting in Cambridge, calling for doctors nationwide to receive better training on the condition.
Protester Katie Johnstone said there was a “problem” getting knowledge about it into the “medical mainstream”.
Also called chronic fatigue syndrome, ME can affect anyone and its main symptom is extreme tiredness.
Mark Harper and Ms Johnstone both have ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) and were protesting outside the school at what they perceive to be a lack of training in medical schools across the UK.
Mr Harper told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire it was a “very disabling disease” that the medical community had “no training on how to handle”.
Ms Johnstone said,
“medical doctors and medical students don't know enough about our illness in order to give us proper medical care”.
“The most severe patients can become malnourished because they are too weak to chew or swallow food, yet they receive no medical help at all,” she added.
“We just have to get that amazing knowledge of medical education and clinical practice into the medical mainstream.”
A spokesperson from Cambridge's School of Clinical Medicine said it recognised it was a “very real condition” and took its teaching about it “very seriously”.
“We regularly review our teaching materials and resources, and have recently updated our ME/CFS materials, in particular, to keep them in line with the 2021 NICE guidelines,”
BBC News: Cambridge ME protest calls for better medical training across UK 18th September 2023