Ms Kerry Lawless:

At the moment, Tick Talk Ireland advises persons in that position to go back to their GP. As a patient group in Ireland and the UK, we are not happy with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, NICE, guidelines. We think those guidelines are a missed opportunity but there are some improvements at an acute stage when people have just been bitten. The first port of call we recommend is to go back to their GP, possibly to bring the extracts from the NICE guidelines with them, to talk again about their patient history and whether they remember being bitten or had some form of rash, and to try to get a clinical diagnosis. We advise them that it might not work but that is the first port of call.