European Epilepsy Day
The 2nd annual European Epilepsy Day takes place on Monday, February 13th 2012, the day before the feast day of St Valentine, the Patron Saint of Epilepsy.
The Day is an initiative of Epilepsy Advocacy Europe, a joint task force of the International Bureau for Epilepsy, an umbrella group of lay epilepsy associations (including Brainwave) and the International League Against Epilepsy, an international organisation representing healthcare professionals.
The aim of European Epilepsy Day is to promote epilepsy awareness across Europe through educational and promotional activities. Organisations like Brainwave all across the continent are organising campaigns or events to highlight the condition.
Brainwave is running a series of radio ads entitled "Shatter the Stigma of Epilepsy", voiced by our Patron, 2FM presenter Rick O'Shea and by four members of Brainwave, Aaron maher, Eoin Kernan, Fionnuala Marston and Emma Beamish.
This micro site and the new awareness videos also forms part of our awareness campaign to shatter epilepsy stigma, as do our Facebook and Twitter pages. We also hope to generate significant coverage of epilepsy in local and national media. Meanwhile the annual Valentine's Roses fundraising campaign will be taking place at locations across the country.
At European level, members of Epilepsy Advocacy Europe will be travelling to Strasbourg to meet with MEPs on the 14th February. The focus will be on making progress on the EU Written Declaration on Epilepsy, passed last September by the European Parliament. That Declaration was itself strongly influenced by the work done around the inaugural European Epilepsy Day in 2011.
Find out more about what you can do to support European Epilepsy Day here.
Find out more about St Valentine and epilepsy here.