Lyme disease: patients complain that the québec network of its inefficiency

Photo Simon Clark
The Parti québécois criticized the government Couillard of neglect patients with Lyme disease.

Pascal Dugas Drone

Wednesday, 7 February 2018 13:06

UPDATE
Wednesday, 7 February 2018 13:15

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QUEBEC-The Parti quebecois criticized the government Couillard of neglect patients with Lyme disease, who should visit the United States to be cared for, while the minister Barrette says Quebec remains the best place to receive care for this condition.

• READ ALSO: An agent for the protection of wildlife unable to get treated for Lyme disease in Québec

“People tell us […] to have met 10, 20, 30 doctors, and that there was no good diagnosis. Finally, it is going to the United States that we finally have the right diagnosis,” said during a press briefing on Wednesday, deputy pq’s Sylvain Pagé.

Photo Simon Clark

According to the president of the quebec Association of Lyme disease (AQML), Marguerite Glazer, more than a dozen U.s. States have already passed laws that allow doctors to treat people with the chronic form of the disease. In Quebec, the disease would be “poorly understood and poorly supported by the health system,” she insisted Wednesday.

Photo Simon Clark

The Parti québécois (PQ) to ask the government Couillard to put together an action plan to better identify and better treat Lyme disease in Quebec.

Lyme disease is normally transmitted by the bite of an infected tick which is found in some forested regions of Quebec. The symptoms are various and vary from one individual to another. According to the AQML, they can manifest as neurological damage, arthritis, muscle, heart, or psychiatric, and fatigue.

“I have talked to hundreds of people with the disease and it is common to hear that they have considered suicide as the only solution to end their suffering,” said the blunt Ms. Glazer.

Beware of the “quackery”, said Barrette

The minister of Health, Gaétan Barrette, has held on Wednesday a press of an emergency in order to “put the record straight at the time”.

“Quebec has, throughout its territory, clinical competence, diagnostic and therapeutic tools that are level. There is no place on the planet that offers something better than us,” he said.

If the United States would seem to offer diagnoses more relevant than the Quebec, he said, it is because some american doctors are Lyme disease cases, “commercial”.

“Charlatanism [medicine], it exists for commercial reasons south of the border”, he summarized.

He acknowledges, however, that the diagnosis of the disease, without its chronic form, can be difficult, since “the presentations can be highly variable, very subtle and quite confusing compared to other diseases”.

“But what is unclear here is blur also to the United States,” he said.

For his part, the minister responsible for the public Health, Lucie Charlebois, has wished to clarify that a committee of surveillance of the disease already exists to monitor its evolution.

“It is already in action. It is not as if we did nothing”, she said.