Annual Review 2007

During 2007, the Association achieved a great deal to improve the lives of people with epilepsy and those who care for them. There is no better example of this than what happened in June 2007. At that time the Organising Committee for the London Olympic Games launched its 2012 logo. Almost immediately the Association began to receive reports from people with photosensitive epilepsy of seizures triggered by the animated version of the logo. The Association reacted swiftly to ensure the logo was ammended. It informed an reassured the whole country about what had happened and protected people with photosensitive epilepsy.

The Association's magazines, 'Epilepsy Professional' and 'Epilepsy Today', continued to be popular in 2007 with more than 100,000 copies distributed during the year. A quality assurance system is in place to ensure that all of our materials and publications are accessible and that quality standards are maintained.

We set up an online epileps advice forum on our website and in 2007 a total of 1.5 million people visited the site, (2006: 1.3 million). Membership of the Association's online community, 'Forum4e' , increased to 3,219 people.

Four more Sapphire nurses were appointed in 2007. Unfortunately, however, the Association had to spend much of its time in 2007 defending the role of the epilepsy specialist nurse against threatened cutbacks within the NHS.

Two new employment booklets were launched to coincide with National Epilepsy Week, which was themed around employment.

The Association's Accredited Volunteers carried out 173 epilepsy awareness presentations and 121 sessions in businesses, care homes and at training events around the U.K. Around 990 people benefited from these activities.

In 2007 we launched our 'Ideal World' women's campaign to highlight issues faced by women with epilepsy. Through 16 radio broadcasts alone the campaign managed to reach an estimated 3.2 million people.

Other campaigning areas included: epilepsy and scuba diving, epilepsy services in south east Wales, epilepsy and low energy light bulbs, epilepsy and employment abd epilepsy services in Northern Ireland.

We worked with Asthma UK, Diabetes UK and the Anaphylaxis Campaign to produce an information pack for school staff and training pack for school nurses, which included information on epilepsy.

There were an estimated 800 meetings of our 93 local branches in 2007. These branches have a combined membership of 3,000 people.

731,204 people directly used the Association's services in 2007 (2006: 661,282).

Download the annual review 2007