MP Ramsey says local Lyme disease sufferers feel betrayed by federal response
Brian Cross, Windsor Star
MP Tracey Ramsey implored Canada’s health minister to scrap the draft framework on Lyme disease on Tuesday, describing how sufferers of the debilitating tick-borne illness are heartbroken by the government’s “status quo” approach.
“There was hope that something would come out of this that would change the way Lyme disease is treated in Canada, and unfortunately this fails to do that in such a dramatic level that the people in my riding of Essex have called it a betrayal,” Ramsey (NDP—Essex) said during a news conference in Ottawa headed by Green Party leader Elizabeth May.
The speakers included Ramsey, a Conservative senator, a Lyme researcher, a director from the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation and a doctor who treats Lyme patients.
Absolutely. In Saskatchewan the government denies there is Lyme here while I travel to Los Angeles and Calgary for proper diagnosis and treatment and spend tens of thousands of dollars
Sue: The reason you are traveling and spending tens of thousands of dollars instead of local treatment is the local treatment costs just became less when you decided to seek help elsewhere. You just eliminated the financial cost on the province. Frustrating but true. I just got bitten by a deer tick today and will probably get the disease because doctors here are lyme disease illiterate just like they are vitamin D3 illiterate. It’s maddening when one goes to a doctor and they know less than you do about the disease, and they don’t care!