Health group

1. Working Group Objectives

The primary mission of our group is to obtain formal recognition of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) within the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD). This objective is fundamental to:

• Guarantee healthcare rights: Allowing patients to access adequate diagnosis, therapy, and medical support.
• Social and legal protection: Providing a legal basis for disability recognition and obtaining reasonable accommodations in the workplace and at home.
• “Bottom-Up” Strategy: Rather than aiming solely for “top-down” recognition (which is often ignored), our strategy aims to insert “child-codes” linked to specific symptoms caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields into the digital ICD-11 system.

2. Achievements (2022 – 2025)

Over the past years, this WG has worked intensely to build a European network and test the WHO’s mechanisms:

• Submission of the first proposal: In May 2022, a “child-code” proposal was submitted within the category “Other specified disorders of the nervous system” (code 8E4Y).
  The link to the proposal is visible after login. It was rejected by the WHO Secretariat.
• Creation of an expert network: We have consolidated collaboration among various European NGOs (Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark) and involved expert physicians.
• Sharing diagnostic tools: Clinical protocols and experimental questionnaires for EHS have been shared among group members to standardize the diagnostic approach.
• Secondary Headache Proposal: In November 2025, a child-code was proposed under the Secondary Headache classification. The reception of this request is currently being followed, with the subsequent expected “audit” by two appointed researchers.
  The link to the proposal is visible after login. You can support it by clicking an Agree button.

3. Challenges and Lessons Learned

In April 2024, we received notification that our initial proposal was rejected by WHO reviewers (Professors Treede and Woolf). Analyzing this rejection allowed us to understand that:

• The reviewers’ focus was excessively placed on the term “EHS” rather than on the direct causal link between electromagnetic fields and the nervous system that we had documented.
• More stringent scientific documentation and a selection of the most recent studies are necessary to overcome academic scepticism.

4. Future Program and Next Steps

The WG continues its efforts with the following actions planned for the near future:

• Preparation of new cases: We are documenting the experience of the first rejection to build more robust proposals, precisely identifying symptoms that warrant a dedicated code. Following the headache proposal, documentation for tinnitus is being prepared for submission in March. Subsequently, the ICD-11 WG team will evaluate which other symptoms to propose.
• New scientific involvement: We will identify a team of internationally renowned scientists and physicians to review our drafts before launching them into the ICD system.
• Constant monitoring: All WG members will register in the ICD proposal system to actively monitor and support each new instance.
• Multi-level Collaboration: We will continue lobbying the WHO in parallel with national actions for the recognition of the condition as a disability and a functional impairment.