The Vitamin B12 Deficiency Support Group

One of Dr Chandy’s campaigns was to raise awareness of Vitamin B12 deficiency in the population in United Kingdom. It was then, and in so many GP practices still is, under-diagnosed because it’s a simple, old-fashioned condition that doesn’t respond to medication because it responds to corrections to the nutritional deficiency.

Almost as soon as Dr Chandy started testing patients for B12 deficiency and treating them with B12 replacement therapy (orally or by injections), the bureaucracy started objecting. People were getting well, so manufacturers of medication and hospitals who both relied on taking money, didn’t like it. And so the charity (Vitamin B12 deficiency Support Group – B12d) was formed, to raise awareness and increase the numbers of people raising awareness about B12 deficiency so Dr Chandy was less of an individual target.

The B12d (short for Vitamin B12 deficiency patient support group) was founded to spread the good work Dr Chandy devoted his life to.
B12d arranges meetings with patients and the public, and with doctors and the bureaucracy of the health service, to highlight the difference that Vitamin B12 makes to so many people. People who had been unable to work, parents with the threat of having their children taken away; Dr Chandy was reviewing the symptoms, and if B12 deficiency was indicated, then he would start treatment. In all cases (that agreed to treatment) they stopped getting worse, and in some cases attained their lives back. Of course Dr Chandy was a General Practitioner and many people had other conditions and not B12 deficiency – he never missed anything including identifying some rare diseases from symptoms alone before the hospital had managed to confirm his diagnosis and start the correct treatment.
B12d became a charity in March 2012, to give it the governance and independence it needed to operate effectively, and Dr Chandy was president until his death late last year.
The aims of the charity are:

to relieve the needs of persons suffering from the conditions of vitamin b12 deficiency in particular but not exclusively by providing support, services and raising public awareness of the conditions.

We rely on donations, and people have been very generous which means we can keep on relying on donations.