Hello,

I feel a bit awkward asking for cash for a cause, as I know you may already have other better-known causes close to your heart and times are tough.

But please know that any spare change from the back of the sofa would be much appreciated by ME Research UK, which I am fund raising in aid of.

ME is a complicated disease impacting the neurological, immune and metabolic systems. A list of symptoms as long as your arm, roughly comparable to stage four cancer in terms of impact on quality of life.

ME and Long Covid are very similar. Roughly half of Long Covid cases - 1.5 million people in the UK and counting - meet the diagnostic criteria for ME. ME and LC are costing the UK economy eight billion annually and counting.

I and 400,000 others with ME in the UK are currently totally screwed by decades of neglectful medical policy and sustained funding shortfalls from successive governments and funding bodies. Almost all funding for ME research comes from ME sufferers and the people who know or care for them, this in spite of the financial hardship ME entails.

We receive no clinical support from the NHS, it's talking-therapies only, for a biological disease. We scrape by on a pittance of welfare. In my case most of this is spent on the drug, supplements and nutrition I need to not deteriorate further. I rely on my partner Sharon for living costs.

Severe patients are facing ignorance and medical harm in hospital, from an NHS that doesn't understand the medical needs of patients whose digestion may be shutting down, whose dysautonomic bodies are confusing the medical play book and some are even dying of starvation because ward staff are reluctant to recognise the need for tube feeding. Patients are kept in busy wards, stretching their bodies way beyond what they can handle as the stimulous of disturbance, light and sound can feel like torture at the severe ME stage. Learning about ME still isn't mandatory during med school, so even newly qualified GPs are misdiagnosing and missing vital signs that could help slow disease progression.

It's a sorry state of affairs in 2026. I fought for my health for 20+ years, doing my very best to stay functional but, like most people with ME, I couldn't stave it off.

I reckon having ME has cost me personally £200,000 in direct costs alone. My savings are gone. ME destroyed my business, so let's call that another £500,000 on top. I cannot work and currently hold little hope of returning to work - not without new treatments and new or repurposed drugs.

Which needs research. Which needs a biomarker. Which needs funding and isn't currently being funded by the UK government.

For example, even a fiver will help towards a biomarker (to reliably identify the disease), around which additional funding, research, drugs and treatments can then be targeted.

Please don't stress if you can't spare much just now. Please just bear me and ME in mind. This is a long-running Just Giving page, so you can always return to this another day.

There's not much more I can do in my current depleted state to support the cause, but I am making a photo project about it all. It's slow progress but it's giving me a defiant creative outlet at least; https://glass.photo/andrewgifford

Thanks for hearing me out! I really do appreciate you.

Andrew