Manitoba: ‘Virtual clinic’ of specialists focused on Lyme disease diagnosis, treatment expected to open early next year
[CanLyme Note: Patient representatives and their experts have been directly involved in the set up for this project in Manitoba so we are very hopeful this can evolve into a model of care Canada-wide that is so desperately needed.]
November 11th, 2019
Program will connect primary health providers, patients to specialists to help treat tick-borne illnesses
Winter may be around the corner, but Manitoba health officials are already focused on treating a summer hazard — tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease.
A “virtual clinic” of medical health officers focused on better diagnosing and treating tick-borne illnesses, first announced by the Manitoba government last June, is expected to be operating by early next year, says Dr. Richard Rusk, the province’s medical health officer for communicable disease control.
“If you have someone with multiple issues and symptoms and they don’t really come up with a clear diagnosis, then they are lost — so how do you look after this group?” said Rusk. …
We wish them well. It may not prove to be a good idea to be working with CLyDRN whose goal isn’t to do anything more than control the agenda. Time will tell if the patient voice and experience will carry any weight. Diverse approaches are needed for this complex disease. A one-size-fits-all approach despite the stage of the disease has never made any sense. It feels ridiculous in this day and age of precision and individualized patient-centred medicine that we have to rely on antiquated antibody tests and guideline set in stone. These antiquated tests and the restrictive narrow definition of the disease for insurance purposes, are what got us into trouble in the first place. They should be scrapped entirely.