News

Millions Missing Protest coming to Geneva

April 10, 2018

Action for M.E. is supporting the Millions Missing campaign with our Millions Missing event in Geneva on Saturday 12 May – and you can get involved at home, online or in person.

Millions Missing is a day of global action, led by US-based advocacy group #MEAction, that calls for health equality for everyone with M.E. Working collaboratively with charities from the US, Australia, Japan and South Africa, we are adding our voice to this call for action.

We are aiming to have contributions from people affected by M.E. all over the world, to demonstrate the need for urgent action on a global scale – which is why we are holding this event in Geneva, the location of the United Nations headquarters and its global public health body, the World Health Organisation (WHO).

We want the WHO and its Member States to recognise M.E. as a “serious, chronic, complex, and multisystem disease that frequently and dramatically limits the activities of affected patients” (Institute of Medicine, 2015) and adopt measures to provide a global and co-ordinated public health response to M.E.

You can get involved by:

• sending us shoes that we will display at the event, representing the lives not being lived as a result of M.E., whether you live with the condition yourself or care for someone who does; you can see the powerful visual impact of this at previous Millions Missing events
• telling us about the impact M.E. has on you or your loved one
• supporting us on social media by sharing our films and images during and after from the event
• attending on the day if you live in or near Geneva and are well enough to do this; everyone is welcome.

We have prepared a simple guide to getting involved that we hope you will find useful.

Following the event, we will work with the Millions Missing campaign to present films and images of this and other events across the world to decision-makers and health officials at the United Nations and World Health Organisation.

Action for M.E. is taking part in this Millions Missing event as part of our international advocacy work. The aim of this work, which we began earlier this year, is an appropriate global public health response to M.E., which can achieve only by working collaboratively with patients, carers, advocates and M.E. organisations across the world.