Cross Party group on eating disorders tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to the cross party group on eating disorders tomorrow, especially as today I visited a woman who has suffered from the condition for most of her life, and was told that had mental health strategies been in place to support her years ago, she would be fit and healthy now.

If this is not a wake up call for action, I do not what is. At the meeting Peter Boyle, a Public Health Specialist will be giving a brief introduction on the work of the All Wales Eating Disorders Special Interest Group. It was enlightening to discover that Peter and his colleagues had previously devoted time and effort into writing a care pathway on eating disorders in Wales, which was then, under Jane Hutt, set to be enforced as part of a National strategy on eating disorders. Unfortunately this did not happen for reasons of which I am unfamiliar with. Therefore, I hope that one of the key first actions for our group is to impress upon Edwina Hart, the current Health Minister the need for the implementation of the care pathway so that those suffering from eating disorders have the care that they rightly need and deserve at every level - from access to GPs who may then refer them to local mental health teams, to the more specialised services.

Experts in the field rightly argue that there will be far less of a need for beds in a specialist treatment centre if sufferers can be supported from the outset- without their condition getting so severe that specialist treatment is the only option. There is much more to do in this field, what with educating GPs about how to identify those suffering from an eating disorder, to providing support networks for people, to ensuring that courses specialising in eating disorders are part of the main syllabus for both nurses and Doctors- all issues that we will discuss in the group during the next three years, at least!