Third delay to ME care plan prompts backlash from patients
The health department failed to explain the postponement to its long-awaited strategy for treating chronic fatigue syndrome which affects hundreds of thousands
Health ministers have delayed a plan for the future treatment of the debilitating condition myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) for the third time in nine months.
Work on the ME Delivery Plan — which the government claims will boost research, advance medical education and improve patients’ lives — began more than three years ago under the Conservative health secretary, Sajid Javid.
Labour ministers have repeatedly pledged to publish the plan and have yet to explain why it has been delayed.
Last October the public health minister at the time, Andrew Gwynne, said the government planned to publish “in the winter of 2024/25”. In December, responding to the inquest into the death of the ME patient, Maeve Boothby O’Neill, 27, the minister told a coroner “we aim to publish by the end of March”.
On June 5, Gwynne’s successor, Ashley Dalton, said it was “a priority for the department to publish the final ME delivery plan by the end of June 2025”.
