Roundtable meeting in St. Andrews tackles Lyme disease

A group representing government, medical, research and patient communities gathered in St. Andrews, N.B., on Tuesday to discuss Lyme disease and how to best combat its spread across the province.

Lyme NB president Janet Higgins says she doesn’t have the disease, but as a caregiver she has daily contact with those who do, and how debilitating the affliction can be.

“You can lose your mobility,” said Higgins. “You can become not able to walk, not able to get out of bed.”

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Southern New Brunswick is an area of particular concern for the spread of Lyme disease. A tick surveillance program initiated last summer showed the number of counties with either established or emerging populations of black-legged ticks increased from three to five.

Dr. Vett Lloyd of Mount Allison University says being bitten by a tick is how Lyme disease is spread to humans. Lloyd says she has been both bitten and become sick due to a tick, and says there’s no meaningful data on the number of sufferers in New Brunswick.

Despite that, Lloyd believes that number is high.

“Officially the numbers are about 10 in New Brunswick that meet criteria and then there are the people who don’t know that they have Lyme disease and they’re ill with something unspecified or they have a different diagnosis,” said Lloyd.

“For a small province we have probably several hundred people getting ill every year.”

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It’s hoped Tuesday’s meeting can give government more information on how to help.

“What are the areas of research that have not been highly researched that show some potential or promise that we should be researching?” asks Karen Ludwig, MP for New Brunswick Southwest.

Lloyd says better research tools are needed to make diagnosis easier, but in the end individual communities must take action with things like community tick checks and individual themselves must be vigilant in their own homes.