Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Wiltshire
(asked on 5th June 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department provides to GPs to help improve the (a) early recognition and (b) management of ME in (i) Wiltshire and (ii) areas in Wiltshire with limited specialist services.
Earlier this year, NHS England completed a long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), stocktake to provide a national overview of service delivery in commissioning and contracting, assessing access, activity, and outcomes. The findings confirmed widely recognised challenges, as well as significant variation in care delivery across England, and a lack of comprehensive activity data.
The Department is working with NHS England to develop an e-learning programme on ME/CFS for healthcare professionals, including general practitioners in Wiltshire, with the aim of supporting staff to be able to provide better care and improve patient outcomes. Sessions one and two of the e-learning programme are now available at the following link:
https://learninghub.nhs.uk/catalogue/mecfselearning?nodeId=7288
The third session is currently being finalised and will be launched later in 2025.
The Medical Schools Council will promote the NHS England e-learning programme on ME/CFS to all United Kingdom medical schools, and will encourage those medical schools to provide undergraduates with direct patient experience of ME/CFS. The General Medical Council (GMC) is the regulator of medical schools, and it is important that education is reenforced at different stages of medical training. Royal colleges play an important role in this. The GMC has included ME/CFS in the content map for the new national exam, so all medical schools will need to teach it as a subject.
We are developing a final delivery plan for ME/CFS, which we aim to publish in due course. The plan will focus on boosting research, improving attitudes and education, and bettering the lives of people with this debilitating disease in Wiltshire and throughout England.