UK TM Society
Lew Gray
lewgray@blueyonder.co.uk

The UK TM Society has completed our first year of existence. We had 76 new members during 2005. The new support group in Poole is up and running and held two meetings; and another new group is in the process of being established up in Berkshire. Margaret Shearer and the Scotland Group has been especially busy lately supporting new patients with TM, including three infants with devastating attacks.  Dr. Douglas Kerr has been involved in these paediatric cases and we are grateful for his willingness to consult and for his support.

We are proud and grateful to have received over 50 donations from individual members plus two corporate donations.  We have also received over £800 ($1360) in tax rebates on contributions direct from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, since we are now a UK registered charity! This has allowed us to take over all printing and distribution of TMA Journal and New Member Packs for all of Europe.

If any ‘European’ members would like to help us with the cost of this work, Jim Lubin has now set up a link from our webpage www.myelitis.org.uk (hit ‘Make a Donation’ button) to GiveNow, where you can donate in euros, dollars or pounds using a credit or debit card. We are hoping to work more closely with TM members in other European countries to make more information available in European languages. Local coordinators are urgently required in Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands and Portugal.

Our members are increasingly using modern communication. Over 100 members have chosen to receive the TMA Journal electronically which is saving us postage and labour costs. We also plan to experiment holding a support group meeting by telephone conference call, to avoid travel problems; have any other groups in the world already tried this, and did it work OK?  We would love to hear from you and to learn about your experiences. 

Sally Rodohan, our Chair, is organising our first dedicated fundraising event on 17th June in North London (Irish music night) - right in the middle of the World Cup!  I am personally looking forward to meeting more TMers at the July Baltimore Symposium.