Lyme Disease Unites Political Opposites

Jeff Green | Feb 19, 2014

There is not much common ground, politically, between LFL&A MPP Randy Hillier and National Green Party leader Elizabeth May. You might say it would take a strange disease to unite them, but Lyme disease has done it.

Both politicians have called for better funding for treatment and diagnosis of Lyme disease, Hillier on a provincial level last year, and May on a national level last week.

Lyme disease was first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. It is caused by a bacterium that is spread to humans via deer ticks, which feed on human blood. The ticks have been established in the vicinity of the Great Lakes in Southern Ontario, and in recent years they have migrated northward.

A report by Public Health Ontario, published in 2012, says that the ticks are endemic only on the north shores of Lakes Erie, Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River. However, the ticks migrate by attaching themselves to migrating birds and white-tailed deer populations and therefore they can be found throughout the province. As well, the report refers to other studies that indicate that their range is expanding over time, and the longer summers and warmer winters that have become common in southern Ontario are likely playing a role in the spread.

“Recent studies indicate that the number of established populations of I. scapularis tick vectors is increasing in Canada and that climate change is likely to accelerate this trend,” according to a Public Health Agency Canada report on the spread of the ticks in Canada.

The ticks that carry Lyme disease have a two-year life cycle, during which time they require three blood feeds. They generally pick up the bacterium that causes the disease from mice or other small rodents. When infected adult ticks attach themselves to human carriers, usually by hopping on from grasses and brush in wooded areas during the summer months, they begin their final feed.

The ticks will remain on the human host for several days, and if they are identified and removed within 12 to 24 hours the chances of contracting the disease are minimal. However the longer the tick remains feeding, the chances of infection increase, and since they grow as they feed it is not hard to tell that a tick has been in place for 2 or 3 days. Once identified, ticks need to be removed without breaking the needle into the human skin, and there are a couple of recommended methods for this. People who have been bitten are encouraged to contact Kingston Frontenac Public Health, who are now offering a dose of antibiotics to patients who can bring a tick that had been attached to their body for over 12 hours. Public Health is sending the ticks in to test the species and the presence of the Lyme disease-causing bacteria. The testing is not being done to help treat the patients but to help determine the range of the disease in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington counties.

In a newsletter directed to health care providers that was published last October, KFL&A Public Health said that “Blacklegged [Deer] ticks are widespread in the KFL&A area and surveillance over the last years has shown an increasing percentage are positive for B. Burgdorferi [the Lyme disease bacteria]”

Once symptoms of Lyme disease occur, and they can range from headaches, body aches, neck stiffness, the appearance of a bulls-eye-shaped rash in the vicinity of the bite, patients are encouraged to visit their family doctor. The prescribed treatment is a 21-day course of antibiotics.

This treatment can successfully deal with many cases of Lyme disease, and is more effective if started at the onset of symptoms. However in some cases more serious complications can develop.

Lyme disease is also associated with chronic illness that can include widespread neurological symptoms that either mimic or trigger other long-term disabling conditions. It is to deal with these kinds of cases that MPP Hillier and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May have intervened.

In the preamble to a petition that Randy Hillier initiated and eventually forwarded to the Ontario Legislature, he wrote “Lyme Disease is a chronic illness prevalent across much of Southern Ontario. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care does not cover far superior diagnostic and treatment methods used in Europe and the United States. As a consequence, many people across the Province travel abroad at their own expense to receive treatment for this disease. The MOHLTC should recognize this problem and introduce modern diagnostics and treatment for Lyme Disease and bring more awareness to the ailment.”

Elizabeth May introduced a Private Member's bill in the House of Commons in June of 2012, and presented a petition to the house last October in support of the bill. With the bill scheduled for debate in parliament in March, last week she put out a press release encouraging Canadians to contact their MPs to help persuade them to consider supporting the bill.

If passed, Bill C-442 would establish a national strategy to diagnose and treat Lyme disease. It would require the Minister of Health to convene a conference with the ministers of health from all the provinces for the purpose of developing a national strategy. Chief among the elements of the strategy would be the “establishment of guidelines regarding the prevention, identification, treatment and management of Lyme Disease, including a recommended national standard of care that reflects current best practices for the treatment of Lyme disease ...”

The initiatives by Randy Hillier and Elizabeth May are directed not only to the spread of the disease, but more urgently to those who require long term, expensive treatment for chronic debilitating neurological symptoms that are not covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and similar plans across the country.