Many North Carolina residents have recently contacted our Department of Public Health to voice their concern over losing state appropriated funding to advance Lyme disease knowledge within North Carolina. Last year the Department of Pest Management collected over 1,400 black-legged ticks, which can transmit the bacteria for Lyme disease to humans.

Although DPH representatives have publicly stated that Lyme disease is both “rare” and that the tick that transmits Lyme to humans is uncommon in our state, the fact that 1,400 ticks were collected last year can hardly be viewed as “uncommon.” Now the funding, which was to be used to test those ticks, is being cut and the truth concerning the risk of Lyme disease from the collected tick sample will never be known.

In order to be diagnosed with Lyme disease, the Centers for Disease Control recommends that the patient be evaluated on both physical symptoms and if the patient was exposed to an area which is designated “high risk” for contracting Lyme. Currently no county in North Carolina is designated “high-risk.” Thus, many doctors will not diagnose a resident if he or she never left the state in the previous weeks prior to the onset of medical symptoms.

Since the DPH has never conducted any research or initiated any effort to determine if areas of North Carolina are at high risk, many residents go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed medically due to the false belief that no areas in our state are at risk for Lyme disease. Residents are then forced to seek an out-of-state doctor to be treated. But the appalling issue concerning Lyme disease in North Carolina is that when residents see a doctor outside the state, they can be diagnosed for the same disease they were told they don’t have by their North Carolina physician. How can the state of Virginia have over 900 cases of Lyme disease last year, with over 26 counties designated “high risk” for Lyme, while residents in North Carolina are asked to believe that infected ticks do not cross the state border or that the ticks behave differently in our state (do not bite humans)?

NCDPH says they must use only scientific evidence to evaluate the risk of Lyme but cite only an outdated, 1993 study as their main source of evidence on current tick behavior. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence,” according to Dr. Ed Masters, the doctor who discovered another Lyme-like illness found in North Carolina called STARI.

Are residents truly to believe that our environment and the ecology of ticks in North Carolina have not changed in 16 years and that more current evidence is not needed to understand the current risk of contracting Lyme disease in our state?

Residents throughout the state are fighting back, as six towns have already declared June as Lyme Disease Awareness Month. The Town of Cary will proclaim the week of June 13 through 20 as Lyme disease Awareness Week. This is to coincide with a “Fight the Bite” awareness clinic being presented at Umstead Park on Saturday, June 13, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Residents can best protect their own health by becoming more aware of all tick-borne diseases found in North Carolina — especially Lyme disease, its symptoms and how to safely remove a tick from a human or a pet.