Dr. Paul McKeown:

I will answer the first part of the question about raising awareness. Doctors want to ensure the patients who come to see them will receive the correct diagnosis. As for counting cases of Lyme disease and treating them, it is the same as everything else - one has to start with the correct diagnosis. I agree that raising awareness is crucial in the context of the treatment of Lyme disease. In 2011 the disease was made notifiable, but since about 2009 my organisation has had material on the website, designed to make Lyme disease comprehensible and tell people how to prevent it - by preventing tick bites and removing ticks after spending days in tick infested areas or areas where there are likely to be ticks. This is information that should be available and we have been pressing to get it out, but getting information out to entire populations can sometimes be difficult. In Ireland tick bites occur at a particular time of year and it is much more likely that one will be bitten by a tick between the end of March and November. This information needs to be made available to people. We hold a Lyme disease awareness week, which has become a Lyme disease awareness day, for that purpose. At the beginning of the tick-biting season in March, April or early May we raise issues and point to posters and flyers. We refer people to the frequently asked questions section on our website. The information is supplemented by media interviews which I conduct every year. Our Lyme disease sub-committee recommends that we make much greater use of social media and has suggested that, during the summer and after Lyme jisease awareness day, we send alerts fortnightly to our large Twitter following. Raising awareness at this level is crucial and a major part of the work of the sub-committee which is involved in determining how much information is being given and how much more is needed.