What a phenomenal year 2019 has been for LDUK and awareness of tick bites, Lyme disease and other tick borne diseases. We are continually inspired by the members of the Lyme community, our fantastic volunteers, and all those who participate in fundraising to enable us to continue raising awareness and providing support for patients. For all our news stories please visit our news section.
Below are just a few highlights from LDUK’s 2019.
January
- January was a month filled with Lyme disease media coverage featuring members of LDUK’s Online Community appearing on BBC South East, BBC Look North and BBC Radio Lancashire.
- LDUK created patient guides for those with acute Lyme disease and for those who are living with late-stage Lyme disease. You can find them in our resources section on our website along with other guides.
February
- In February we started a consultation process as a stakeholder for the NICE Quality Standard for Lyme disease.
- Press Manager, Julia Knight, started giving regular tick awareness training at Bransby Horses Rescue and Welfare.
- Our biggest news of the year has to be the exceptional milestone of Lyme Disease UK achieving charity status! We are delighted to say that Lyme Disease UK is officially a registered charity (1182212). This could not have happened without all the hard work of our volunteers and generous donations from the Lyme community, general public and sponsors.
March
- In March we received a £300 donation from the QM Sapphires cheerleading team of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. LDUK community member, Janey Cringean, went along to a special event to accept the donation on our behalf.
April
- LDUK were presented with a cheque for £1081.25 from Lincoln firm, Witham Oil and Paint. Managing Director Nigel and Marketing Director Ali presented the cheque to our Press Manager, Julia Knight. Nigel and Ali are personal friends Karen Everatt whose daughter Abigail is very ill with Lyme disease. Each year Witham Oil and Paint holds a charity ball to raise money for causes close to their hearts and in support of Abigail they chose LDUK as one of their charities this year.
- Mark Bell and Scott Cameron took on the challenge of the ’10 Under the Ben’ mountain biking race in Scotland and smashed their target of raising £1000 for Lyme Disease UK by raising over £1100! LDUK’s Morven-May MacCallum attended the event on behalf of the charity and manned a stand for 2 days in order to hand out awareness materials and support Mark and Scott’s wonderful effort.
MAY
Each year in May we amp our awareness raising efforts for Lyme disease awareness month, and 2019 was our best year yet:
- We emailed 10,000 schools in the UK, both primary and secondary, to spread the word about tick bites and Lyme disease.
- A stunning animation was created by the very talented RoPu Chen and Cedric Fangeat ( a member of the LDUK community) in able to further help with our #WakeUpToLyme campaign.
- Various landmarks throughout the UK were lit up green in support of Lyme disease awareness month, including the Blackpool Tower!
- We sent out more posters and leaflets in the first week of our 2019 awareness month than we did during the whole #WakeUpToLyme campaign last year! A whopping 20,000 leaflets and tick awareness cards, and 10,000 posters were distributed. It was a fantastic campaign with so many fundraisers running alongside awareness drives. Thank you to everyone who took part!
- LDUK has been helping The Royal College of General Practitioners by advertising its new Lyme Disease Toolkit which should prove to be a highly useful and accessible resource for GPs, other medical professionals and the general public wanting to learn more about the disease.
JUN
- Lyme Disease UK won a £1,000 Movement for Good Award from Ecclesiastical thanks to nominations from the public.
- LDUK was delighted to host our first conference, ‘A Morning with Dr Joseph Jemsek MD’ in London.
JULY
- LDUK helped to publicise the publication of the NICE Quality Standard for Lyme disease for which the charity is a stakeholder.
- LDUK’s Morven-May MacCallum bravely jumped out of a plane and did a sponsored skydive for LDUK, raising an amazing £1259 for the charity!
AUG
- LDUK added its name to the US-based Ad Hoc Patient-Physician Coalition to support their 58-page comments relating to issues surrounding the new Infectious Disease Society of America’s (IDSA) guidelines for Lyme disease which fail to use the GRADE system for ranking the quality of the evidence on which they are built.
SEP
- We were delighted to announce the winner of LDUK’s 2019 children’s poster competition as 7 year old, Evangeline Baxter-Fox. Well done Evangeline for creating such an impactful poster with a really strong message to help people #WakeUptoLyme and to Moyles Court School for embracing Lyme disease awareness.
OCT
October was another busy month for fundraising:
- Kirkham Grammar School raised a whopping £1750 for LDUK! Thank you so much to the school for their support and also to Sophie Ward for maintaining a link with her old school, raising awareness amongst the students and for attending to pick up the cheque.
- Isabella Doyle kindly organised a cake stall at her school, Northgate Primary School in Bishop’s Stortford with the help of her sister Eva, family and friends. They raised a smashing £200 and also raised awareness of Lyme disease and how to prevent it by handing out LDUK leaflets to all year 5 students which now means that 60 families have the information they need to be tick aware.
- Michael Rubenstein Conferences Ltd chose LDUK to be the beneficiary charity of their conference, ’22 QCs On The Hot Employment Law Issues 2019-2020′ and raised an exceptional amount of £3000!
NOV
- LDUK trustees Natasha Metcalf and Ann Gregson attended and hosted a stand at the Association of Directors of Public Health’s Annual Conference in London in order to showcase our work and to continue to raise awareness of Lyme disease. We were very excited about this event – it was an excellent opportunity to network with members of the Association and other charities.
- As a registered charity we were thrilled to finally be accepted to the easyfundraising and Amazon Smile programmes, these initiatives enable people to raise money when the shop online and it doesn’t cost an extra penny! If you’d like to sign up and raise money for Lyme Disease UK, we’d be super grateful.
We’ve got plenty more in store and as always will keep the community updated as we go. Do you have something to add? Just drop us a line and let the team know!