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Election 2010 - Vote for fibromyalgia

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Category: Campaigning

Published on Tuesday, 23 March 2010 23:34

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The election will have an effect on events and issues affecting fibromyalgia and some of this could be positive if we take the opportunity. If the election goes ahead in May it would be pointless having our parliamentary awareness event on International Awareness Day.  Rob Wilson MP has suggested a Tuesday in June at about 11.30 am as the best time.  He would get a health minister to attend and he agreed that this would be a good event to launch the proposed Integrated Care Pathway* for fibromyalgia.

We need to lobby parliamentary candidates and after the election MPs will have to sign up to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on fibromyalgia again!  To help achieve this and get them to the awareness event in June we have discussed the following plan of action:

• To ask groups to invite their MP candidates to an event or meeting.
• To provide a letter with FMA UK’s specific plans that MPs can assist with, for people to personalise and send to their MP candidates.
• Ask MP candidates  to sign a pledge as part of the above actions saying that they will sign up to the APPG and attend the first awareness event.
• Have the pledges sent to FMA UK and forwarded to Rob’s office who will send out a thank you letter and follow up that they have honoured their pledge.

Here we have included a draft of a  letter you can  send to your parliamentary candidates.  Please amend the sections in red to make it personal to you before sending it on.  You can send it  electronically or by post but it is really important that you make it your own personal letter to your MP. MPs will pay more attention to a variety of letters from their consituents on a single subject than if they receive 50 identical letters.

The election is fast approaching and we need to get fibromyalgia on the agenda of the political parties. They need your vote so now is the time to go and see them. We need to campaign for better local services, better national understanding and more education for the professionals.

This is an ideal opportunity, not to be missed and we urge ALL of you to write at this time.

Find the names and contact details of your local candidates at:

• Conservative candidates
• Labour candidates
• Liberal Democrat candidates
• Scottish National Party candidatesp
• Plaid Cymru candidates
  

When you are speaking to your MPs or their staff you may want to show them some of our leaflets or share some information from these briefing notes on fibromyalgia.
Sample letter to send to your MP or parliamentary candidate

*An integrated care pathway (ICP) is a multidisciplinary outline of anticipated care, placed in an appropriate time-frame, to help a patient with a specific condition or set of symptoms move progressively through a clinical experience to positive outcomes.