Help Us Fund the Future for Research into ME

Who knows how many people there are who have ME in the UK, or Europe? Statistics are not kept and the apathy continues.
Yet if we use the ubiquitous assumption of a quarter of a million UK patients having ME then if such a population were ignored by the healthcare system, left to research their own disease, subjected to establishment-controlled discrimination, offered only deleterious treatments as recommended by flawed NICE guidelines, and offered no hope of a way out from this situation due to zero funding being allocated for fundamental research into the disease – if this were true then it would be seen as a national scandal in any civilised society.

No treatments, no adequately funded research, no future for patients.

Imagine having to endure this situation for decades - losing out on life, ignored by society.

Yet it has been this way for decades for people suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) in the UK.

UK charity Invest in ME Research continues to try to change this.

The charity believes that high-quality biomedical research into ME will find biomarkers and uncover the cause(s) of ME and facilitate development of treatments for the disease.

Our Christmas/New Year Fund Appeal aims to raise funds to develop a UK/European Centre of Excellence for ME that can attract researchers, physicians and healthcare staff to study and treat this disease and allow collaboration with other Centres of Excellence in other countries as the concept develops.

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Invest in ME Research is an independent UK charity finding, funding and facilitating a strategy of biomedical research into ME, and promoting better education about the disease. The charity is run by volunteers - patients or parents of children with ME - with no paid staff.

The charity and its supporters have raised over £2 million to fund biomedical research into ME and to facilitate European and international collaboration to tackle this disease. We need to raise more for the Centre of Excellence model.

A 5 year plan aims to fund young/early career as well as experienced researchers and encourage research into ME who will develop the foundations for the Centre and allow continuation of this research.

With the hub of research based in Norwich Research Park, which is home to over 12,000 people including 3,000 researchers and clinicians with an annual research spend of over £130 million, the opportunities for establishing and maintaining a strategy of high-quality biomedical research into ME are obvious.

Over this Christmas and New Year period we are hoping to raise funds toward another PhD studentship and to allow more medical students to participate in research as part of building a Centre of Excellence for ME.

The charity continues to explore other ideas and continues to emphasise international collaboration amongst biomedical researchers. Our annual international ME conferences and research Colloquiums continue, subject to the situation with the pandemic - events responsible for establishing better education and more cooperation amongst researchers.

With our colleagues in the European ME Alliance we are establishing a voice in Europe for people with ME.
We have also been paying attention to other problems caused by this insidious disease - such as isolation of patients.

The charity has provided a voice for people with ME to challenge decisions being made that affect their lives and futures.

The Centre of Excellence is at the heart of our research efforts and is a vision that has even being set up in USA by the National Institutes of Health.

We welcome support to help us continue to develop the foundations for a long term strategy to research and treat this disease.

For this holiday season please support us to provide the opportunity to see that philanthropy is actually going to make a difference to people's lives.

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