News

Back in April The MEA wrote to the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) to ask them to change their decision to classify CFS as a mental health disorder in an important training document for GPs:  Care of People with Mental Health Problems. We have now received a very disappointing reply.

Adam Findlay, aged 16, from the Weston-super-Mare was your average teenager, playing for his local and school rugby team and socialising with friends until, at the tender age of 13 he was struck down with ME. Suddenly his life changed.

The ME Association has just been approached by a major TV news channel which is collecting stories about people who regret the day when the pain-killing drug, co-proxamol, was taken off prescription – except for doctors using it on a very restricted ‘named patient’ basis.

  Photo: Brian Grech From silent sufferer to eloquent and beautiful advocate for ME – that’s the astonishing story of sixth-former Denise Vella, who lives in Malta.

An ME Question Time – an opportunity to discuss what’s happening in the ME world today – will be held in Colchester, Essex, on Saturday, October 11.

Eric Smart, who is cycling from Aberdeen to Australia for The ME Association popped into the village of Weston, near Spalding, South Lincs, on Friday, May 16 – 561 miles into his epic 15,000-mile journey. He plans to reach Aberdeen in South Australia some time in 2010.

The ME Association and The Young ME Sufferers Trust today jointly reject this week’s call for the number of graded exercise therapists to be increased. This is because of our serious concern for the safety of patients  given this controversial approach to management.

To mark ME Awareness Month, The ME Association wants to hear from as many people as possible about their experiences – good or bad – of coping with ME.

The ME Association rejects calls being made this week for the number of graded exercise therapists to be increased because we have concerns about both the effectiveness and safety of this controversial approach to management.

Dear Sir It was a bad day for children when ME got called by the barmy name ‘Chronic fatigue syndrome’. Some of our children can’t speak or swallow and have to be tube fed. That is so not ‘fatigue’. That is devastation. Jane Colby Executive Director The Young ME Sufferers Trust

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From The Economist print section, 8 May 2008 ME is a puzzling illness, but it appears to have a biological basis and a test for it could be developed.

Labour MP for Norwich North, Dr Ian Gibson, has been asking about the recent closure of specialist ME paediatric services in Leeds, Stevenage and London.

  From The Argus, Brighton, 8 May 2008 A woman who suffered chronic fatigue syndrome was sacked from her job – but went on to win £150,000 on TV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

The IMEGA electronic news group, founded nine years ago to provide a means of contact and information between officers of local and national ME groups, was closed without warning at the weekend.

From the East Anglian Daily Times, 7 May 2008 (reporter: Elliott Furniss) A YOUNG man from Colchester who had been plagued by ME for 10 years took his own life, an inquest has heard.

Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson been firing off questions to Government ministers about Incapacity Benefit and ME.

From The Guardian, May 6 After a bout of glandular fever at university, Keith Kahn-Harris developed chronic fatigue syndrome, from which he still suffers. He explains how this debilitating and misunderstood illness has changed his life for ever.

From the Daily Mail, 5 May 2008 (writer Daniel Bates) The debilitating disease ME could be in the genes, scientists say. They found that patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis shared certain genetic characteristics.

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