This Christmas national charity the ME Association will be bucking the trend by NOT asking its members for money. Instead, it will give them the chance to say ‘thank you’ to the people who support them – their unpaid carers.

Members will be asked to nominate that special person in their lives – with 100 of the people nominated being selected at random to receive a hamper full of seasonal treats.

Over 250,000 people in the UK have the devastating energy-sapping illness Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a quarter of them severely. They are supported by a vast community of unpaid and largely unsung carers.

“Carers are under-valued and often go unnoticed. The country owes a huge debt to them because they work for free most of the time, giving vital support to family members and friends who have M.E,” commented the charity’s campaigns director, Martine Ainsworth-Wells.

"Our 'From ME to You' campaign aims to recognise the support that carers provide to the charity's members. I wish we had enough funds to honour every carer this way.”

Because of the Cost of Living Crisis, the ME Association has decided this year not to ask the M.E. community to dip into whatever savings they have left to support the charity’s usual Christmas appeal.

“Now's the right time to pause our fundraising and take some pressure off our generous but already hard-pressed members”, added Ainsworth-Wells.

The campaign starts with a card being posted out to every member this week. The card invites members to make their nominations online or by phoning the charity’s head office in Buckingham.

Nominees will be selected randomly over a six-week period, with most of the hampers being posted out in time for Christmas.

The charity will acknowledge its unsung heroes by featuring stories from its members about their carers.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The charity will be happy to share stories of our carers being recognised in this way. If you are interested in individual stories, please contact our press officer Tony Britton, email: tony.britton@meassociation.org.uk or phone 07946 760 811.

The ME Association – motto ‘Changing Attitudes, Improving Lives’ – was set up almost 50 years ago to bring hope to people living with ME, otherwise but rather misleadingly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s waged a constant battle since then against ignorance about the illness and an unfortunate tendency by many medics to dismiss the condition as being simply ‘All in the mind’. At the moment, there is no cure for the illness.

In recent years, the charity has successfully fought local and national campaigns to improve both the reliability of services for people with ME and the medical research aimed at boosting the evidence-base for new treatments and possible cures.

The ME Association support the latest National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on how to manage the illness, which urges new exacting standards on treatment and care. We were involved in advising NICE for four years while they drew up the latest guidance.

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