On Saturday, May 12, 2018, Japan ME Association will participate in the global #MillionsMissing protest as part of the International Alliance for ME’s Visibility Event at Place Des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, the location of the World Health Organization (WHO).
#MillionsMissing is a global day of public action that calls for health equality for patients with ME. This year, Japan ME Association joins for the first time through its participation in the event in Geneva, where messages from Japanese ME patients will be displayed among those from many other countries. The International Alliance for ME is a joint international advocacy movement which aims to raise the profile and awareness of ME at the WHO level. The goal of the Alliance is to collaborate with organizations and individuals at the national and international levels to advocate for the adoption of a resolution by the WHO and its Member States recognizing ME as a “serious, chronic, complex and multisystem disease that frequently and dramatically limits the activities of affected patients (Institute of Medicine, 2015)” and to adopt measures to provide a global and coordinated public health response to ME.
JMEA believes that it is critically important to combine our efforts with ME advocacy organizations internationally to more effectively convey to the Japanese government the urgent need to improve the current public health response to ME. We firmly believe that advances at the WHO level and in other countries will positively influence the situation of ME patients in Japan and vice versa.
Japan ME Association 