Essex group Zoom meetings

[chris]

Hello All

Since the Covid pandemic began we have not been able to hold our face-to-face meetings in Chelmsford. Indeed, our last meeting was cancelled a few days before the first lockdown was finally announced in March 2020!

Since then, we have been holding joint online meetings via Zoom with the Kent group, coordinated by Andy Veitch, and suggesting the attendees might be mainly people living in Essex, Kent, the South East of England and the East of England (as the Anglia group currently has no Local Patient Support Ambassador to facilitate the group). However, all MDS UK online meetings are open to all our members across the UK so, although we have had a core of regular attendees from within our area, we have also had many joining us from all over the UK. It has been of real benefit to some of our members who would previously not have relished travelling long distances to attend a face-to-face meeting. Sadly, we have been sorry that other members were disappointed as they did not have technology skills or simply did not like the online setting for meetings. It has certainly been a difficult time and currently, we do not feel that returning to face-to-face meetings is safe for our members whilst there are still high numbers of Covid cases.

Since March 2020, we have held 8 of these joint meetings online via Zoom and we had Dr Pavel Koutoucek, and his colleague, Dr Kashif Waqas, both from Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, as speakers on one of them. Most of the meetings have been patient-to-patient support, discussing issues of importance to people with MDS and CMML, particularly in relation to Covid-19, vaccines and treatment, as well as the shielding issues for our members.

Just to let you know that the date of the next joint meeting will be Tuesday, 23rd August 2022 11-1pm. Here is the link to the website page where you can register in advance to receive joining instructions for the meeting.
https://mdspatientsupport.org.uk/event/ ... m-meeting/

All best wishes

Chris