NI MEA Initial Response to NICE Guidelines on ME/CFS

22nd August 2007

The NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) has today issued its guidelines on the care and treatment for those with ME/CFS.

This is the NI MEA's initial response:

" The Northern Ireland ME Association is disappointed that these new guidelines bring us no nearer a cure for this common and debilitating illness, and that so few management options are being offered to NHS patients.

The NICE guidelines are welcome to the extent that they further confirm the validity of this emerging illness, and that NHS staff of all grades have now been given detailed instructions for its management.

Also welcome are stipulations that all long term patients should be referred to dedicated specialist clinics; that all children with ME should be cared for by a paediatrician; and that severely affected patients who are housebound and bedbound should receive intensive support in their own homes.

Unfortunately, the NHS in Northern Ireland is poorly equipped to implement these new national guidelines. The ME Clinic at Belfast City Hospital is chronically under-funded; as from May 2007 it can no longer accept referrals from outside Belfast.

In March 2005 The chief Medical Officer in Belfast assured the NI MEA that NHS provision for ME patients in Northern Ireland would be reviewed once the NICE guidelines were published.

The time has now come to deliver on that promise.