It was three and a half years after diagnosis in 2013 that Elisabeth Ildal, now 64, decided to found Danish Parkinson’s organisation Cure4Parkinson. After attending the World Parkinson Congress in Portland, Oregon, in the US in September 2016, she spent a few weeks at an exercise rehab centre in Montebello, Spain.

“In three weeks, I improved my level of function 22%. I was totally convinced that there was something about training that helped Parkinson’s, so in November when I came home, I founded Cure4Parkinson because I wanted to help.”

A keen table-tennis player since she was 13 – and now a World Parkinson’s Table Tennis Championships medallist – Ildal decided in 2016 to open Denmark’s first private exercise centre just for people with Parkinson’s. “It was really fantastic. People with Parkinson’s can do fitness, table tennis, boxing, biking. Now the Centre has moved to Rudersdal, another district of Denmark. It is run by Peter Zimmerman and Rachid Haj, and we renamed it the Rudersdal Neuro Table Tennis Centre. There is table tennis Monday and Thursday, and they have fitness, boxing and yoga Monday and Wednesday.”

Elisabeth wearing the medals she won at the World Parkinson’s Table Tennis Championships in Crete, Greece, in November 2023

There is a social side too. “They have coffee and cake; they’re also having Christmas parties and summer parties,” says Ildal.

Ildal hopes that, in the future, there will be enough resources to open the centre to people with other neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s.

Ildal outlines what she and the other four Cure4Parkinson board members and their helpers do as an organisation. “We put on events, we go to meetings with politicians, we aim to increase awareness because a lot of people still don’t know what Parkinson’s is – especially in Denmark,” she says. “We held a concert on 27 November for Light of Day 2023 in Copenhagen, collecting money for research.

“In Denmark, we have a little sunshine island called Bornholm. Once a year, there is a meeting where all the politicians come to the island – it’s a big event, so we go there. I write a lot to the media and talk with politicians, and I try to make my own city council listen.

The mayor of Rudersdal Ann Sofie Orth (front row, centre) visits Elisabeth and her fellow board members and exercise trainers Rachid Haj (front, left) and Peter Zimmermann (back row, second from left) at the Rudersdal Neuro Centre

“Cure4Parkinson is also campaigning for rehab centres and table tennis to be available to people with Parkinson’s on prescription. We help where we can: we have just donated a table-tennis table to Sano in Denmark, which is an expert rehab centre for people with Parkinson’s,” says Ildal.

Believing that there’s power in numbers, Cure4Parkinson has recently joined Parkinson’s Europe as a member as well as the Danish Parkinson Association.

Ildal is also running for the European Parliament this summer – if successful, Parkinson’s would be one of her priorities. “For me, running for this is a platform to talk about Parkinson’s. That is what my motivation is – so that I can have a platform to talk about Parkinson’s and table tennis.”