IT’S NOT ALL IN THE MIND

FEDERAL Health Minister Greg Hunt has shown sympathy on several occasions for tick-bite patients suffering mysterious and at-times crippling illnesses.

Early this year, in response to an approach from News Corp, he asked the National Health and Medical Research Council to fast-track research into Lyme disease and Lyme-like illnesses in Australia.

On another occasion Mr Hunt’s office said he believed families deserved a full medical review and analysis.

Whether health authorities agree with the minister is another matter. Mr Hunt’s own department has form, having once shut down the Chief Medical Officer’s clinical advisory committee on Lyme disease.

A Senate inquiry into tick-borne disease, which attracted 1200 submissions, recommended last year that the Government increase funding into finding causes and set up clinical trials.

Nevertheless, patients continue to be treated as though they don’t know their own minds and doctors either refuse to consider the possibility Australian ticks carry microbes that are to blame for debilitating illnesses, or are too afraid of being penalised by agencies that refuse to accept the presence of a Lyme-like ailment.

Even if the naysayers are right and Lyme disease is not here, why don’t they consider the presence of a similar disease? Such attitudes belong to the Middle Ages, yet linger within bureaucracy and a profession that sees itself as learned.

The Bulletin reports today the case of Mark Bodewes, who has shown remarkable strength of character while his immune system struggles and he battles symptoms from a bite two years ago.

When his GP was approached for comment, the doctor refused to come to the phone. Whether that related to the treatment doctors in other parts of Australia had received for trying to help tick-bite patients was not clear.

A report in April said at least six Australians had been driven to suicide because doctors told them their symptoms – including brain infections, vomiting, severe pain, fatigue, seizures and even inability to walk or talk – were all in the mind.

Something sinister is at work. It is high time the Government and medical profession took the blinkers off.