Dr. Eoin Healy:

Yes, there is. I have seen such mapping. One cannot always rely on it. Those who live on the east coast and take their holidays in the west might develop symptoms when they return. The Health Protection Surveillance Centre states on its website that "likely estimates suggest that there are between fifty and a hundred cases each year". The data I have seen from the Cork and Kerry region suggest that this number of cases is encountered in that region alone each year. I have estimated, based on the population size for that region extrapolated for the country as a whole, that there are more than 250 cases in this country each year.

If we come at it from a different angle, it is reckoned that there are 65,000 new cases of Lyme disease appearing in Europe every year. Based on the population size in Europe of approximately 735 million and on a pro ratabasis of 4.58 million, that would give us about 400 cases a year. Dr. Armin Schwarzback might be able to comment on this but certainly American testers would reckon that they are possibly picking up something in the order of one in ten cases; in other words, they are missing nine cases for every one they pick up. If we were to take a somewhat more conservative view and say we are catching, say, one in four and if we have 400 new cases per year, that means that there are 1,600 cases a year in the country. If we accept that there is such a thing as chronic Lyme and that a certain percentage are not responding to treatment and that their disease condition persists over a number of years, we must think about the burden of illness that is building up over a period of, say, five or ten years and the cost to the families, the sufferers themselves and the whole health system.

As to whether we could do anything about reducing the number of ticks in the environment or ticks on deer, it is an impossible situation. There are deer everywhere. I am not recommending a deer cull or anything like that but it is just that the situation with deer is out of control. To wipe out ticks on one acre of land would almost be impossible. If one thinks about the west of Ireland it is-----