ME/CFS South Australia Inc: Federal inaction on the MCS Review

ME/CFS SOUTH AUSTRALIA INC

Registered Charity 3104

Email:
sacfs@sacfs.asn.au

Mailing address:
PO Box 322,
Modbury North,
South Australia 5092

Phone:
1300 128 339

Office Hours:
Monday - Friday,
10am - 4pm
(phone)

ME/CFS South Australia Inc supports the needs of sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related illnesses. We do this by providing services and information to members.

ME/CFS South Australia Inc aims to keep members informed of various research projects, diets, medications, therapies, news items, etc. All communication, both verbal and written, is merely to disseminate information and not to make recommendations or directives.

Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed on this Web site are not necessarily the official views of the Society or its Committee and are not simply an endorsement of products or services.

Federal inaction on the MCS Review – take action!!

Saturday 12 May 2007

Three years ago the Federal Office of Chemical Safety promised to review MCS issues. But just about nothing has happened since then. There’s a key meeting coming up and it’s time to seize the moment and write to the Federal Minister for Health and Ageing. (We’re all going to be a lot more aged before his bureaucracy helps us to be healthier!)

Peter Evans, Society member and convenor of the SA Task Force on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, has written to us as follows:

Hi all,

The President of the Allergy Sensitivity and Environmental Health Association of Queensland, Dorothy Bowes, has started a lobbying campaign asking that people with MCS write to the federal Minister for Health and Ageing to inquire when the national review of MCS by the Office of Chemical Safety will be completed.

I understand from the Director of the Office of Chemical Safety that the community consultation that is supposed to be part of the review has once again been delayed. Responsibility for the consultation process has been passed to the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme’s Community Engagement Forum. They are due to discuss the MCS review at a meeting this month, so letters to the Minister would seem timely at present.

It is now over three years since the Office of Chemical Safety made a commitment to review MCS and still we have no outcome. Unless we keep up the political pressure the issue of MCS could be sent to the back burner indefinitely.

Attached is a form letter written by Dorothy Bowes. Please print it out and send it off to Minister Abbott. If you don’t like the wording in the letter feel free to change it to reflect your own personal views. The point is that we need to let our politicians know we are out there and that we are not happy with things as they are.

Hopefully the MCS review, like the Parliamentary Inquiry into MCS in South Australia, will lead to changes on a national level that will assist people with MCS in our daily lives. We can only hope.

Regards

Peter Evans
Convenor
SA Task Force on MCS