Doctors Think Lyme Disease Can Be Caught in North Carolina !!!
By Den Heslop on 01/10/2009
10:12 AM EDT, October 1, 2009
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- For years, doctors have said that people were unlikely to get Lyme disease in North Carolina.
But that attitude is changing after the tick-borne disease was diagnosed this year in at least four patients who never left their home counties.
The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Thursday that the state epidemiologist, Dr. Megan Davies, is getting word to doctors, who have been reluctant to even test patients for Lyme disease.
"What we're trying to communicate to physicians is that it's possible to acquire Lyme in North Carolina, so don't hold to an old belief," Davies said, adding that she and others are meeting with infectious disease doctors at the state's medical schools to spread the word.
State health officials soon will test 19,000 ticks for pathogens.
Lyme bacteria is carried on the black-legged tick, which appeared to feed on reptiles rather than mammals in Southern states. So it was considered unlikely that ticks would transmit the Lyme bacteria to humans in North Carolina.
Some patients report difficulties getting Lyme tests and diagnoses -- even after they've been bitten by a tick or are suffering from a rash, fever, headache or fatigue. All are symptoms of Lyme disease.
Angela Stott of Asheville said her son, Max, went several weeks this past summer without a diagnosis before he became so sick he could barely walk and had such excruciating headaches his eyes crossed.
More than one doctor told her Lyme disease was not a factor in North Carolina. Even when a Lyme test came back positive, Stott said, doctors still questioned the diagnosis.
"It was nightmarish," she said.
A key component of the new message is that the bacterial infection is harder to treat the longer it lingers, said Dr. Carl Williams, state public health veterinarian.
"What we're interested in is primary prevention of acute disease," Williams said, noting that an early intervention with antibiotics is generally a cure.
Among the evidence that Lyme disease can be caught in North Carolina are reports from military doctors at Camp Lejeune who offered findings that Marines were coming down with Lyme after being stationed at the Onslow County base.
"It's taken a lot of investigation to uncover these cases," Davies said of the confirmed Lyme disease incidents. "We are working to try to protect (people) against this illness in North Carolina."
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Comments
Comment by Anonymous on 02/10/2009 22:14:38
After years of denial and obstructionist public policy positions by the NCDPH, and after years of often hostile and insulting treatment of desperate patients in NC by the medical academic institutions of NC and by the ID docs around the state (characterized most dramatically by Janelle Rhyne, past President of the North Carolina Medical Board), we get this announcement today from the NCPHD. Why now? Because, without question, Dr. Davies……who cannot be faulted in her new role as state epidemiologist…… is following explicit instructions from the CDC to make this announcement at this time through her new boss, the CDC puppet Engel, former state epidemiologist and current director of the NCPHD. The tireless work of NC citizens David Tierney, Beth Jordan and Marcia Hermann-Giddens has generated overwhelming arguments and data supporting the presence of Bb in ticks and native infections with Bb in NC, arguments and data which have now forced the CDC and Engel into this action so as to limit further embarrassment and potential liability for the years of denial, mixed messages, repeated use of gratuitous and circular logic, and, when that didn’t work…… non-communication. For the CDC, Engel, and the others to protect themselves for years of inexcusable conduct, they will begin to promote excuses for delays in the planned research, and/or just offer bits and pieces of junk or incomplete science while they decide their best course of evasive action. So expect the NC Lyme issue to be slow played, shielded, and massaged by those in control in their effort to make it digestible and even comfortable to the citizens of NC, and to allow enough time for the ooze of shame to evaporate from the hides of those guilty of this unethical and fraudulent distortion of the truth on unsuspecting citizens and most doctors in NC. In my view, ongoing manipulation of public health information by those entrusted with this responsibility, which can be shown to have adversely affected the public health, should be a federally prosecutable offense.
The policies put forth for years by the above referenced ‘usual suspects’ has resulted in the ignoring of thousands of NC citizens as they suffered from a complex, chronic and often debilitating illness. There is no amount of money or other recompense by which those responsible can make amends for their role in the incalculable suffering of so many, the shattered relationships due to illness unrecognized, and the wasting of unfulfilled lives.
At this point my heart wants total accountability and a full display of the truth from the CDC and NCPHD, and the ID doctors in NC and around the country, whose stifling arrogance has left a stench that will last for decades. My heart wants a full willingness from committed souls to learn the nuances of this pandemic, a pandemic which has already inalterably affected the human condition forever; I want this at this time so that the suffering can begin to end and the healing begin to start now, not when the perpetrators feel safe by virtue of the distance and cushion of time passed. I am not concerned with what happens to them. Others will make that decision. Having said that, I have no doubt that matters will not end well for any of them.
As a footnote, the IDSA Panel for Review of the Lyme Disease Guidelines met July 31, 2009 in Washington DC. A decision on Guideline changes is due by the end of December. I suspect that the CDC has received some early news of the Panel’s displeasure with the IDSA’s manipulation of the pandemic and is reacting accordingly in anticipatory fashion…… We shall see……
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