We would like to wish all of our Members a very Happy and safe Christmas.
Thank you all for supporting us all in what has been a very difficult year.
With your support we were able to continue our work remotely and had a successful year by also supporting you. During our first lockdown, with the help from Promise Gluten Free we were able to provide our more vulnerable members with care packages. We also held a Gluten Free Tea Party during Awareness Week which was a lovely distraction in trying times and was very well received.
Our Dietetic clinics have continued all year virtually and we hope that those who have availed of them have found them to be helpful.
This year we launched a Coeliac Alert system to help GPs diagnose the estimated 37,000 people in the state who are suffering from coeliac disease. The new Coeliac Alert will plug into the Socrates software system used by 50% of Irish GPs and will be capable of generating two types of alerts. The first – the Coeliac Finder Group Alert – triggers when a patient presents with symptoms common to coeliac disease, such as irritable bowel syndrome, iron deficiency or osteoporosis, and suggests the doctor investigates coeliac disease as a diagnosis.
We also launched a brand new website, on it you will find health and dietary information and advice, recipes, articles, ebooks, the shared experiences and stories of many coeliac sufferers, special offers on food products, and just recently a Gluten Free Christmas Hub, with everything you need to know to have a safe gluten free Christmas.
Later in the year we wondered how to bring you our Annual Gluten Free Living Show, we did so for the first time virtually, sponsored by SuperValu. Thank you to the 3,185 people who registered for the Show, which included Health and Wellbeing sessions, Nutrition Education talks and Dietetic Clinics, Cooking Demos, and a fun Kids Academy.
Our Christmas Raffle was another first for us virtually and thanks to you all was a great success. We had 20 lucky winners of some amazing prizes kindly sponsored by our gluten free brands who have been an amazing support to us also this year! You can view our winners here https://coeliac.ie/christmas-hub/raffle-winners-2020/
We hope you will continue to support us in 2021, you can now renew your Membership for 2021. We’re really excited about launching our App next year. The App is big undertaking for the Society and we hope that all of our members will benefit from this.
Our phone lines and email will be unattended from 1pm tomorrow until Monday 4th January.
Looking forward to working on your behalf next year.
The Coeliac Society of Ireland.