Hexham Forum Cinema screening of Voices from the Shadows on Sat 24th November at 5pm. followed by a Q&A session with Dr Nigel Speight. Admission is free but please ring 01434 601144 after 4.30pm to book a place. This screening has been organised by Margaret Rumney and her daughter Emma who made the posters and adverts. They are delighted that when they invited their MP along he agreed to attend.
Dr Nigel Speight is a Consultant Paediatrician from Durham who has been involved with children with ME and their families for many, many years. He is considered to be the most experienced UK paediatrician involved with ME, being the paediatric medical advisor for the ME Association and TYMES Trust as well as the medical advisor for the 25% Group and the Welsh ME charity WAMES. Through his work for The 25% Group he is becoming involved in more and more shocking cases where very seriously ill people are not only not receiving the care they need, but they are suffering at the hands of professionals. Dr Speight was a member of the Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group which produced a Report on ME in 2002 and more recently he was a member of the team which produced the highly respected and specific ‘International Consensus Criteria for ME’ in 2011 (updating the Canadian Consensus Criteria). Most recently he helped with the valuable ‘Myalgic Encephalomyelitis International Consensus Primer for Medical Practitioners’ 2012. The Primer can be downloaded from this site www.hetalternatief.org/ICC%20primer%202012.pdf to give to your doctor to help with more accurate diagnosis and treatment options. Sadly, misdiagnosis is currently widespread and is causing untold suffering both to those with ME and to those wrongly diagnosed with ME when they have other more easily treatable and even curable conditions. Both this Primer and the one recently written by the IACFS/ME should go a long way to countering the high levels of misunderstanding caused by the NICE Guideline and the CDC or Oxford descriptions of CFS/ME.