News

ME sufferer David Christie (15) has to spend 19 hours a day in bed. His mum, Antoinette, talks to Gráinne MCCarry of the Belfast Telegraph.

From the Aberdeen Press and Journal, 11 August 2008 MORE than 20 hardy souls completed the 32km trek through the Lairig Ghru to increase awareness of ME, the chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalopathy.

One of Northern Ireland’s most prominent ME fundraisers, Antoinette Christie, and Horace Reid, from the Northern Ireland ME Association, appeared on a late night show on Downtown Radio on August 6 – with MEA medical adviser Dr Charles Shepherd and Dr Derek Enlander, from New York, joining the discussion.

Good article about ME from the ‘Worcester News", 30 July 2008. HOW do you go from a high-flyer to a bed-ridden zombie who finds even speech a soul-destroying struggle? To find out, you need look no further than Joe Green, a once hard-working financial director who reached the pinnacle of his profession only to plummet […]

ME Research UK are offering the four-DVD set of this year’s  Cambridge conference for just £5, including  post and packing (within the UK).

Shortly after Luke Collyer sensationally quit the 18-months-long Amazon Walk benefitting the ME Association’s tissue-bank appeal – after a series of differences with his trekking partner  Ed Stafford – Ed had this amazing and uproariously funny email interview with Sarah Staples, a reporter with the "Leicester Mercury".

   The author of Britain’s brightest new book about ME, Nasim Marie Jafry, signed dozens of copies at the book launch in Edinburgh’s Waterstone’s bookshop last week.

To mark the recent 20th anniversary of their formation, Sussex and Kent ME/CFS Society have relaunched their website in a new format.

The latest issue of the ME Association’s quarterly magazine, ME Essential, is landing on members’ doormats this week with an extra heavy thump. 

Friday, July 25 Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Dear Mr Purnell   Having been closely involved in the Department of Work and Pensions consultation process regarding new medical guidance on ME/CFS for the purpose of Disability Living Allowance and Carer’s Allowance application assessments, The ME Association is obviously very interested in the process for replacing Incapacity Benefit with the new […]

Calling all physically fit carers, friends and relatives of ME patients. Your help is very urgently needed and may be of great assistance to the UK ME community.

from BBC Online, 23 July 2008 Our medical adviser Dr Charles Shepherd comments:  "The important message here is that taking too much fluid/water (ie overhydration) can be just as dangerous as not taking enough fluid/water (ie dehydration)." A woman has been awarded more than £800,000 after she suffered permanent brain damage while on a detox […]

Pictured, from the left: Jim Moran, Willy Hopkins, Willy Bearpark and Charlie Hagan. Workers on an oil platform 130 miles north east from Aberdeen in the North Sea have produced some black gold – especially for The ME Association!

There was a good eight-minute discussion on the proposed Employment and Support Allowance which will replace Incapacity Benefit on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme this week – featuring Jemma Packett who has ME. Listen here.

Following the appointment of Sir Leszec Borysiewicz as the new Chief Executive at the Medical Research Council (MRC), the MEA wrote to the MRC to ask for a meeting to discuss the scandalous lack of government funded or commissioned research into both the underlying cause of this illness and approaches to management that are not simply behavioural (ie […]

The ME Association is pleased to announce that we have been informed by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) that they will now remove their classification of CFS as a mental health disorder.

We reproduce below the transcripts of all four of the presentations on Child Protection Issues that were given to the All Party Parliamentary Group on ME at Westminster on Wednesday, July 2.

Disabled people who live in Kent, south London and parts of east Sussex are being invited by the Southeastern Railway to take part in an online survey to find out what encourages them to use their passenger services– or indeed prevents them from taking the train. 

MAY BE REPOSTED INFORMATION FROM THE ME ASSOCIATION This is a summary of key points to emerge from a business meeting and the AGM of the ME All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG).  The meeting was held in Committee Room 20 at the House of Commons on Wednesday 2 July 2008 from 1pm to 3pm. The minutes […]

The Royal Society of Medicine have announced plans to webcast the whole of their Chronic Fatigue Syndrome conference which was held in central London on 28 April.