Minutes of meeting of All Party Parliamentary Group on M.E. held at 1pm, Tuesday 2nd July 2008 Committee Room 20, House of Commons  (The agenda for the next meeting on 8th October can be found here).

This is a brief summary on a very successful international ME/CFS conference that was held in Pavia, Italy on Friday 26 September 2008. 

By 2.23 pm this afternoon, a total 2,000,678 pages had been read at this website since we started counting on 7 May 2007  – and the number is going up by about six thousand every day. The number of visitors to the website in the lst 16 months has been 383,309. The ME Association website has consistently been top of the Google rankings for information about M.E. since its relaunch in January last year.

Health Minister Michael McGimpsey has announced plans to abolish prescription charges in Northern Ireland.

After three years as group co-ordinator, Eileen Shoosmith will be standing down from her job at the Reading Area ME Support Group at the end of the month. The group now urgently requires volunteers to help with the following tasks: answering emails, co-ordinating social events, maintenance of a new website.

Nearly 250 people packed Hove Town Hall on September 26th to hear Prof Leslie Findley and five local ME/CFS specialist doctors led by consultant Keith Hine give presentations and enter into discussions.

As you may know from the Action for ME and MEA websites, James Purnell MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has agreed to address the next APPG on M.E., about the Welfare Reform Green Paper, ‘No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility.’

If anyone knows of an ME-savvy GP in central London – particularly in Covent Garden, or the WC1, WC2, EC2, W1, and W2 areas – could you please let us know?

We're posting this message for urgent assistance from Mr Doug Fraser.

Experiences from people with ME/CFS who have been offered Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and/or Graded Exercise Therapy since the NICE Guideline on ME/CFS was published in August 2007 are wanted by a new website launched today to support the the Judicial Review – which is expected to take place over three days in October or November. 

Prime Minister Gordon Brown provided an answer on videotape – when Reading Area ME Support Group's public relations officer Miriam Potter took up No 10's challenge to quiz him on a subject close to her heart on You Tube.

Fatigue syndrome funding and therapy

More funding is needed for CFS/ME research

The Rt Hon James Purnell MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has agreed to address the next APPG on M.E., about the Welfare Reform Green Paper, No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility.

From Press Association Newswire, September 8

More than a third of patients with long-term fatigue conditions like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) believe complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) are more effective than traditional medicine in treating their illness, research launched at the British Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester reveals.

Health reporter Jane Elliott has written an interesting story on the BBC News website today about the creation of a new prototype wheelchair – with wheels that fold in on themselves, making it easier to transport the wheelchair when it's not in use.

From the Bromsgrove Standard, September 5 (report from Tristan Harris)

The chairman of the Worcestershire ME Support Group Ian Logan has called for more funding for research into the debilitating illness.

From the Bromsgrove Standard, September (report by Lucy Thomson)

A BARNT Green woman travelled to Switzerland to end her own life using the assisted suicide method which is legal over there, an inquest heard.

A new support group for parents caring for children with ME has been formed in Berkshire.

From the Edinburgh Evening News, September 2 (Report by Adam Morris)

Our 'How do you cope?' survey is now closed. A total of 2,400 people completed the survey on online while paper copies of the survey are now being loaded on to the system.