Fibromyalgia Syndrome on BBC Radio 4 Womans Hour

BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour programme is planning to do a piece on Fibromyalgia Syndrome (Fibro) on Monday 8th September as part of UK Fibromyalgia Syndrome Awareness Week.

Details have yet to be confirmed, but FibroAction have been assisting the Woman's Hour producers to make contacts and gather information. Woman's Hour producers learnt of Fibro and the need to raise awareness of the condition through contact from Jo Fisher, the Development Officer of the Fibromyalgia Support group for Surrey and Sussex. Eminent rheumatologist Dr Ernest Choy has agreed to talk on the programme, which is likely to also contain input from a patient and someone with helpline experience.

The Woman's Hour programme has been broadcast for over 60 years, first on the BBC's Light Programme (now called Radio 2) and then on Radio 4. In its current format, the first 45 minutes of the programme consists of reports, interviews and debates on health, education, cultural and political topics, with the last 15 minutes being taken up with short-run drama serials. Apparently, research consistently shows that approximately a third of the programme's listeners are male!

A consultant Rheumatologist and Director of Research and Development at King's College Hospital, Dr Choy is also Reader and Director of the Sir Alfred Baring Garrod Clinical Trials Unit in the Academic Department of Rheumatology, King’s College London. Dr Choy is currently chairman of the Arthritis Research Campaign Clinical Trials Collaboration and a member of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Committee Standing Committee for International Clinical Studies Including Therapeutic Trials. He chairs the EULAR Taskforce on developing recommendations for management and classification criteria for Fibromyalgia Syndrome, which last summer produced a set of evidence based recommendations for the management of Fibromyalgia Syndrome. These were the first guidelines on the treatment of Fibromyalgia Syndrome to be produced in Europe. For more details on these, see here.

If you miss the piece on Fibro on Monday (when it is currently scheduled to be broadcast), then you we be able to listen again via BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour website here.