Cambridge ME group & Cambridgeshire ME Rural Tea & Chat group are fund raising for the ME Association’s Ramsay Research fund. 

Normally as a group we would be raising awareness by giving out leaflets and talking to people at a stall in the city centre during ME Awareness Week, but due to the pandemic we have switched to online only activities. 

ME affects around 250,000 people across the UK, 75% are too unwell to work or study, 25% are completely housebound or bedbound. It has a worse quality of life score than other common conditions like cancer, but only gets 5% of the research funding that similar conditions like MS receives. There are no effective treatments available, and patients are left with trying to manage symptoms often with little medical input.

ME is often triggered by a viral infection, so a small proportion of those who suffer from Covid19 may go on to develop ME. We are already seeing many people suffering with Long Covid who are displaying ME like symptoms.

If you have found lockdown hard, imagine doing it for years, whilst totally exhausted, in pain, and unable to tolerate light or sound. People with ME are often too unwell to leave the house for years, and not well enough to exercise, watch TV, read, draw, do puzzles or crafts or baking, or any of the other activities you may have done during the lockdowns. Even mild ME causes people to only be able to work part time, and spend much of their evenings and weekends in bed. 

Quite aside from the personal suffering this causes, it is also a great economic cost to the country in paid out benefits and taxes that would have been paid in over many decades, and a great societal cost in all the advances that would have been made by people whose lives have been lost to ME, spent at home or in bed rather than contributing to society, whether that be in science, the arts, or other fields.

So, if your expenditure has decreased during the last year due to not having to pay for commuting, or leisure activities such as cinema, theatre, sporting events or eating out, please consider making a small donation to fund research into a condition which often stops people doing these activities for years or decades.

If your business has not been able to partake in its usual fundraising activities, please do consider supporting us instead, in sympathy with the way people with ME are not able to carry out their usual activities.

To find out more about ME, please click here. 

To find out more about Cambridge ME group, please click here. 

To find out more about Cambridgeshire Rural ME tea & chat, please click here. 

To find out more about the Ramsay Research Fund, please click here.

To find out more about the ME Association, please click here. 

To support our campaign for people with ME to be prioritised for the Covid19 vaccine, please click here.