BRAME sees International Awareness Day on May 12 as an ideal opportunity to have a united approach across the world, through the wearing of the symbolic Blue Ribbon to help to promote a greater awareness and understanding of ME/CFS, both as a very real, and for many, a very debilitating illness, and to highlight the consequences of living with ME/CFS for the sufferer, carer and all those affected by the illness.

May 12 also offers a worldwide opportunity to create a greater awareness and understanding of ME/CFS amongst the medical profession, educationalists, employers, politicians and society in general.

We welcome the universal efforts of all the individuals, groups and countries around the world who are supporting the BRAME campaign, not just on May 12, but throughout the year, which offers us all the opportunity to create a greater awareness and understanding of ME/CFS, and also allows us to offer understanding, support and friendship to all those living with ME/CFS.

In order to shed light on ME/CFS, for the thirteenth consecutive year, May 12 has been designated as International ME/CFS Awareness Day. Sufferers of this illness and the people who care about them are urged to express their concern about the devastation that is ME/CFS. The strength of May 12 event lies in the fact that it offers individuals around the world an opportunity to communicate the devastation of ME/CFS on the same day.

The May 12 date was chosen to commemorate the birth date of Florence Nightingale, the British nurse who inspired the founding of the International Red Cross. She apparently contracted a paralyzing ME/CFS - like illness in her mid-thirties, and spent the last fifty years of her life virtually bedridden. Despite her illness, Florence Nightingale managed to found the first ever School of Nursing. It is fitting that the "Lady of the Lamp" now shines as a ray of inspiration and hope to victims of ME/CFS from the 20^th and into the 21^st century.

May 12 ME/CFS Awareness Day was initiated by Tom Hennessey, President of RESCIND, USA.

BRAME - Blue Ribbon for the Awareness of ME

May 2005