September 30, 2016.
For many months, associations of Lyme disease patients have been mobilizing to alert the government to this still little known and poorly managed pathology.
Avoid the feeling of abandonment of patients
The Department of Health has indicated that the government will launch a major plan to fight Lyme disease. ” This plan aims to avoid the sense of abandonment and therapeutic wandering faced by Lyme patients ”, Explained the Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, in a press release. A little earlier, she had received patient associations to assure them of her commitment to the issue.
The main source of the associations’ anger was indeed the insufficient management of this infectious pathology. Problem of diagnosis or treatment, the medical profession does not know how to welcome patients, because Lyme disease and its symptoms are still too little known. Yet, caught early, the infection transmitted by a tick bite infected with bacteria is easily cured.
Mobilization of Lyme disease research
Concretely, this plan launched by the government will have five objectives: improving tick control measures, strengthening of surveillance and prevention, standardization of patient care, the improvement of diagnostic tests and the mobilization of research on these diseases. This plan will also be an opportunity to publicize the disease through a ” training of health professionals “And by” actions aimed at the population “.
In 2014, the number of new cases in France was estimated by the Sentinelles Network at more than 25,000, a stable figure since 2009. To find out if you have been infected after a tick bite, look to see if a red, round plaque forms and extends in a circle from the bite area. If you have been infected, your doctor will put you on antibiotics and you will be out of harm’s way.
Read also: Lyme disease: millions of patients who ignore each other?
