Patient Representative Announces Lyme Law

Health: Lyme disease law announced

Patient Representative Announces Lyme Law.

(13.08.2010) On the occasion of a press conference of the patient organization „Lyme disease and FSME Bund Germany“ (BFBD), the Federal Government Commissioner for Patients, Wolfgang Zöller (CSU), advocated the nationwide reporting of Lyme disease and the strengthening of patients' rights. „Lyme disease has become a major public health issue - so far it is one of the most underrated diseases“, so Zoller.

According to the experts, around 1 million people in Germany suffer from Lyme disease, although exact figures are only available from the eastern German states, as they have already introduced a reporting obligation for Lyme disease. For example, around 6,000 people are infected each year in the new federal states and in Berlin. However, the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher, as there are still some serious medical deficiencies in diagnosing the disease. For example, self-help associations have been complaining for a long time that doctors often do not recognize chronic Lyme disease and those affected are sent home with a wrong diagnosis.

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that can be transmitted by ticks and against which there is no vaccine protection, as the bacteria like flu viruses constantly change their surface. In the early stages, the disease can be relatively well treated with antibiotics, but due to the often too late diagnosis, often chronic, and then affects several organs. Shortly after infection, Lyme disease can often be recognized by a ring-shaped skin rash or rash in the area of ​​the tick bite, often accompanied by a feeling of flu and muscle and joint pain.

In a chronic course, however, the disease can also lead to inflammation of the nervous system, joints, heart muscle or meninges, regularly accompanied by motor disorders, concentration problems and mental disorders such. Depression and dementia. In particularly severe cases, the disease may even cause paralysis and death. Not infrequently, the infection ends with lifelong pain, inability to work and the destruction of social relationships, according to the internist Walter Berghoff of the German Lyme Disease Society. According to Ute Fischer, the manager of the BFBD, the fact that health insurance funds and courts frequently reject the claims of the patients resulting from the illness as unfounded due to a lack of specialist knowledge is problematic.

The lack of experience in dealing with Lyme disease

The lack of experience in dealing with Lyme disease is in the eyes of the patient officer Zöller the main problem. „It can not be the case that a patient goes from doctor to doctor and the diagnosis is still unknown after two or three years“, He said in the context of the BFBD press conference and called in this regard „finally a common action of doctors, science and health insurance companies.“ Therefore, the Federal Ministry of Health will develop a concept that will be available by the end of the year and will be cast in law in 2011. The existing research, diagnostic and treatment deficits must be remedied, Zöller explained.

Also the experts of the patient organization „Lyme Disease and TBE Bund Germany“ and the „German Lyme Disease Society“ are of the opinion that the research and treatment of the disease is still completely inadequate and therefore urge that physicians should urgently develop in this direction and that more clinical studies should be undertaken to study the disease. The patients should also have more say in the joint federal committee of doctors and health insurance companies, as the joint request of the patient representative, the German Borreliosis Society and the BFBD.

Across Germany, the risk of contracting Lyme disease is very different. While in southern Germany about 40 percent of the ticks carry the dangerous bacteria, in northern Germany there are only about 10 percent. In order to avoid an infection persons who were traveling in nature for a longer period of time should then thoroughly search for ticks. Those who have been stung by a tick should take it to the doctor for analysis to see if the tick carries the bacteria. If this is the case, there is an urgent need for immediate treatment with antibiotics, which is successful in approximately 90 percent of treatments in the early stages of the disease. About four weeks after infection, the disease begins to spread throughout the body and is far more difficult to diagnose and treat. From then on, the risk of misdiagnosis and, accordingly, of the wrong therapies increases considerably. (Fp)

Also read:
Ticks: increase in Lyme disease cases
Prevention: Do not panic with ticks