posted
my girlfriend called from virginia. said the washington post had a large article on lyme disease.
has anyone seen it? she moved there from az/seattle route. said there is much discussion about lyme disease.
when i got diagnosed in 4-05, she had never heard about it. but in va it is a common area of discussion.
Posts: 76 | From Kalispell, Montana | Registered: Dec 2006
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Areneli
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In Swelling Herds, A Growing Risk Larger Va. Deer Population Making Lyme Disease a Public Health Issue
By Amy Gardner Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 25, 2007; C01
A surge in reported cases of Lyme disease in Fairfax County has prompted an outcry from residents who say the lawns and woodlands surrounding their homes are overrun with infected ticks and the deer that carry them.
The exponential increase has also led county health officials to acknowledge that managing Fairfax's burgeoning deer population, which in some locations has numbered 400 per square mile, is no longer about nuisance control. It has become a serious public health issue that requires immediate attention, they say.
"Deer are the Metro system for the ticks" that carry Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, said Jorge R. Arias, who manages Fairfax's disease-carrying-insect program. "The ticks are all over the county. Wherever the deer can go, they will take the ticks with them."
Confirmed cases of Lyme disease, which is characterized by such varied symptoms as a bull's-eye-shaped rash, fever and fatigue, rose from three in 2004 to 82 in 2006, according to county data. Much of the increase is due to better reporting of a disease that is often quickly treated with antibiotics without being confirmed by blood tests. Still, public health officials say there is little doubt that case numbers are rising locally and nationally.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported cases rose from 19,800 in 2004 to 23,300 in 2005. Cases remain relatively low in Virginia -- 274 in 2005 compared with numbers in the thousands in such Northeastern states as Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York.
But the increase in the Washington region is causing growing concern. Loudoun County claims half of all reported cases in Virginia. In Maryland, Montgomery County has seen confirmed cases grow fivefold since 2004, to 216.
And the very neighborhoods where deer are least welcome might be attracting the tick-carrying herds.
"Suburban lots with azaleas and rhododendrons is just like laying out a buffet for deer," Arias said. "We have created in suburbia what is essentially a perfect habitat for them." That, in turn, has created the perfect environment for transmitting the bacteria to humans, he said.
Country Club Manor in Centreville, a neighborhood of 20-year-old colonials on the edge of Cub Run Stream Valley Park, is riddled with hoof prints and deer droppings. The lower branches of dozens of shrubs are stripped bare. The lawn of Deer Park Elementary School is littered with torn grass tufts, a telltale sign of deer grazing. It is not unusual, neighbors say, to see a herd of 12 or more deer ambling down the road in broad daylight.
Nor is it unusual to pull a tick from one's body after gardening or playing in the yard with grandchildren, said resident Robert E. Jakubowski. It has become a way of life on Pamela Drive to tuck trousers into socks, apply insect repellent and perform a full-body check for the tiny nymphs, or baby ticks, that usually transmit the disease, he said.
Lyme disease has become a way of life, too. Jakubowski is one of 13 people within a one-block radius who say they have been treated for Lyme disease in the past two years. Jakubowski has been treated three times, he said. A few doors down, Sally L. Pekarik spent eight days in June in the intensive care unit at Reston Hospital Center after flulike symptoms prompted a Lyme disease diagnosis.
"The deer population has been out of control for years," Jakubowski said. "There have been minimal attempts to control it."
Fairfax launched a deer management program about a decade ago after several traffic accidents involving deer made headlines. The county sponsors managed hunts during the winter months, during which screened applicants participate in a daytime hunt on parkland. Separately, police sharpshooters "cull" herds on overnight expeditions several times a year.
But the results are limited, said Earl L. Hodnett, the county's wildlife biologist, who noted that most county parks where deer are counted remain far from his goal of no more than 15 to 20 deer per square mile. Officials are limited to parkland where firearms pose little risk to people but where shooters have limited access to deer, which are not constrained by public boundaries. Managed hunts in January and February netted 133 deer. An additional 48 deer have been killed in four sharpshooting events this year.
"We're starting out with a big problem," Hodnett said. "There's no easy way to quickly fix a problem that's been building since the mid-'80s."
There's also no easy way with no staff, Hodnett said. In the early years, Hodnett had a part-time assistant, but the job has not been filled for several years. And although the county's deer population seemed to be decreasing in the years after the program began, numbers are on the rise again, he said.
"We are losing ground where we had gained," he said.
Fairfax supervisors are likely to include money in next year's county budget to hire an assistant for Hodnett as well as two part-time workers. Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) has led the push.
Frey said he has not always supported the county's herd-thinning efforts, which he has viewed as more of a "feel-good" policy than effective control. Shooting deer in Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville doesn't reduce car accidents in Great Falls, he said. He also noted that until now, he viewed deer as more of a nuisance than a health risk and was less willing to devote more county dollars to the problem.
"A car collision with deer, while tragic, I don't know that it's avoidable in an area like McLean," he said. "You're never going to be able to hunt deer in an area like that. But in areas with large herds, when you see a huge spike in Lyme disease, that sort of puts it in a different perspective. We need to increase the efforts to reduce the herd size."
Officials also want to know more about the true prevalence of Lyme disease at a time when reporting efforts are unreliable. State and local officials are stepping up surveillance of deer and ticks to better understand how widespread disease-carrying ticks are. (An analysis last year of 500 deer ticks collected across Fairfax showed that about 15 percent carried the bacteria, Arias said.) They are working with doctors to improve reporting of Lyme disease. And they plan to improve public education about preventing infection by wearing proper clothing and applying insect repellent.
But all agree the problem cannot be erased overnight.
"Eradicating the deer herd is probably not achievable," said Frey, who counted more than 40 deer on a recent daytime tour of Cub Run Stream Valley Park. "Short of shutting down the parks and hunting 24 hours a day, I'm not sure how much we can do."
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