More than 350 sportspeople – including Olympians Dina Asher-Smith and Tom Daley – have signed a letter to the prime minister calling on him to meet former sprinter Beth Dobbin and commit to increased funding towards ME research.
Dobbin, 32, recently revealed in an interview with BBC Sport she had been diagnosed with “life-decimating” ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) and as a result spends more than 22 hours a day in bed.
ME is a chronic, fluctuating disease, causing symptoms such as sleep problems, issues with thinking and memory, pain, and severe persistent fatigue that does not improve with rest, and more. It has no known cure or specific treatment.
More than 400,000 people in the UK are thought to have ME, though the true figure could exceed one million, with severity ranging from people able to work or study to those requiring round-the-clock care and tube feeding.
On 21 October, Dobbin wrote to the prime minister but did not receive a response – and she has now been backed by athletes across sport.
“For many of my team-mates, I dropped off the face of the earth four years ago when I developed severe ME,” she said.
“I’ve been taken aback and extremely touched by how many of them – and so many others in the sports world – have jumped at the chance to help by signing this letter. It means so much to me.
“I hope that, with all of them behind me, Andy Burnham is listening and will commit to doing what’s needed to deliver real change for a community that has been neglected for so long.”
Among the 360 sporting figures to have signed the letter are Everton manager David Moyes, his United States women’s counterpart Emma Hayes, and former Chelsea and England centre-back Millie Bright. Athletes Laura Muir, Eilish McColgan and Adam Gemili are among 114 Olympians and Paralympians to have added their support.
The letter calls on Burnham to “level the playing field” for funding into ME research with that for other illnesses “to give hope to the many affected that something is being done about this life-destroying, much-ignored illness and its spiralling impact”.
It says: “The disease has received extremely low levels of research funding compared to other conditions. Between 2019 to 2024, UK government research funders committed just £6.6m in funding for research into ME, compared to £79.1m for Parkinson’s and £496.4m for dementia.
“Prior to this, biomedical research funding was almost non-existent. As a result of the lack of research funding, there are no approved treatments.”