Beth Dobbin, the former Team GB sprinter who competed at the Tokyo Olympics five years ago, has said that myalgic encephalomyelitis has left her bedbound for more than 22 hours a day and that she has left her house only five times this year. Dobbin made the disclosure live on Good Morning Britain on Wednesday 4 November, appearing by video link because she was unable to travel to the studio, according to the Mirror's report on the interview.
The Doncaster athlete, who retired in April because of her condition, used the appearance to press the case for public investment in a disease she says has been neglected by the health service and by government. She has written an open letter to the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, calling for a substantial increase in funding for ME research and for NHS care, and says she has not yet received a reply.
From the Olympic track to 22 hours in bed
Dobbin described a decline that began in 2022, when she contracted COVID-19 and, a couple of months later, glandular fever. The early symptoms were mild, she said, and she continued to compete at world, European and Commonwealth level. It was only after the Commonwealth Championships that her health collapsed.
My life's been pretty much destroyed ever since.
Asked to describe the illness, she said the list of symptoms was too long to recite and that ordinary activity makes them worse. Her account matches the clinical picture of post-exertional malaise, the defining feature of ME/CFS, in which exertion of any kind triggers a lasting worsening of symptoms, as set out in the clinical summary of myalgic encephalomyelitis.
The scale of the change is stark. Dobbin said she now spends 22 hours a day in bed. Five years ago she was running for Britain at the Tokyo Olympics; today she measures her year in the handful of occasions she has managed to leave the house.
A diagnosis that takes years, and a health service that sends you away
Ed Balls, co-presenting the programme, raised the case of his wife, Yvette Cooper, who he said spent a year bedbound with ME in her early twenties before recovering. He noted that three decades ago the illness was often dismissed as psychological.
I wish it was all in the mind, because I think I would be better from it by now. It takes sometimes years to get a diagnosis. This is a very physical illness.
Dobbin's frustration extends beyond diagnosis to treatment. She said patients are sent away by their GP, and that specialist clinics exist without the doctors needed to address a condition she described as life decimating rather than a sniffle. The absence of a clear diagnostic test and the long waits that follow have made ME an easy illness for the system to overlook, and patients have paid for that neglect in years of their lives.
That is the argument behind her letter to Downing Street. ME research has historically attracted a small fraction of the funding given to comparable chronic conditions, and Dobbin's intervention puts the question of parity directly to a government that has otherwise been keen to be seen celebrating British Olympians.
Why the silence from Downing Street matters
Dobbin was careful not to personalise the failure. She described the Prime Minister as likeable and down to earth, and said she felt awkward about adding to the demands on his time. But she returned to the numbers: an illness that affects many people, a research budget she considers inadequate, and a care system that offers little to those most severely affected.
Her case has drawn support from other athletes. The Scottish 200m record holder's retirement in April followed her diagnosis, and fellow Olympians have backed her appeal to the Prime Minister for research funding, as The Athletic reported on the campaign. The backing matters because it breaks the silence that has long surrounded severe ME, a condition that leaves many patients too ill to campaign for themselves.
Balls ended the interview with a prediction that Downing Street would make contact, arguing that the country should honour Olympians when they make important cases for action as well as when they win medals. That remains a promise rather than a commitment. Dobbin is still waiting for the reply.
What happens next
The immediate test is whether the Prime Minister's office responds to Dobbin's letter and whether that response includes money. Behind it sits a larger question about how the NHS treats illnesses that are poorly understood, disproportionately affect women, and have no pharmaceutical fix. Dobbin's account, delivered from her bed rather than a studio sofa, makes the cost of inaction concrete: a life on hold, a career ended at its peak, and a patient left to argue her own case in public because the institutions that should have helped did not.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV1 and ITVX at 6am.
Frequently asked questions
What is ME and what are its main symptoms?
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, is a long-term condition whose hallmark is post-exertional malaise, a worsening of symptoms after physical or mental effort. Patients also report profound fatigue that rest does not relieve, sleep problems, and difficulties with memory and concentration.
What did Beth Dobbin say on Good Morning Britain?
Dobbin said ME has left her bedbound for more than 22 hours a day and that she has left her house only five times this year. She described the illness as physical rather than psychological and called for more government funding for research and NHS care.
What is Beth Dobbin asking the Prime Minister to do?
She has written an open letter to Andy Burnham calling for a sharp increase in funding for ME research and for NHS services. She said on 4 November that she had not yet heard back from Downing Street.