Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My name is Ralph Hawkins. I'm a physician with a practice in an academic medical setting in Calgary. I'm told anecdotally that my practice seeing my patients is one of the largest in Canada. Since 2012 we have evaluated more than 300 patients pres

Health committee  A really short answer to that question is yes.

Health committee  I would like to see included in the framework the literature from Dr. Samuel Donta, for example, that addresses cohorts of patients who have received longer duration treatments with oral antibiotic therapies with outcomes that have been really quite satisfactory. This is not addr

Health committee  Thank you for allowing me to interject. Dr. Njoo just alluded to my name and then mentioned that there was no definitive evidence of transmission of Borrelia. I know that this committee has been given in evidence a textbook that was published in the late 1990s on neonatal dise

Health committee  The barriers to the accurate diagnosis of Lyme disease start with the patient's presentation for medical assistance. When patients present and give a clear history of a tick bite, they're often greeted with a rebuff, as Liz has already suggested—“Lyme disease doesn't exist here;

Health committee  Sure. Thank you, Mr. Webber. The Babesia duncani and Babesia microti are both intraerythrocytic parasites that are similar in some ways to the malaria parasite. They are not Lyme disease, but they are tick-borne infections. They're transmitted by the same ticks that carry Lyme d

Health committee  Mr. Webber, my practice in prescribing to my patients is not constrained by the guidelines and is not constrained by any arbitrary time limit. The guidelines actually contain a very small disclaimer at the outset identifying that they are voluntary and that they are not meant to

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  I am itching to get in. Dr. Njoo has not been completely open about the differences in testing between the United States and Canada. The national medical laboratory authored a paper, which is in the medical literature, in February 2017, on the diversity of test results in Canada

Health committee  Thank you, Dr. Carrie. I agree with you. I think the framework has missed the mark. I think the reason it has missed the mark is that there are people within the mechanism of health delivery in Canada who do not want to cut the umbilical cord from the CDC in Atlanta. You've hear

Health committee  I would point to the researchers' getting together at Queen's University two weeks before the framework conference to have a closed meeting, by invitation only, to set up their research network as being an example of how these evidence-based expert types of things come forward. T

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Kang. I think that, moving forward, this framework needs to be supervised by an oversight committee. I would propose that an oversight committee similar to what has been put forward by legislation in Congress would be an excellent idea, with equal repres

Health committee  I've answered Mr. Kang's question almost the same way. I think this entire process needs an oversight committee that has equal representation and a little bit of power.

Health committee  Vaccines for Lyme disease are available for my dog. Vaccines have been developed for humans. A LYMErix vaccine was developed in the late 1990s. When it was applied, the vaccine caused a number of Lyme-related symptoms in recipients and was removed from the market. The research

Health committee  I disagree with the statement that Dr. Njoo has just given about the testing being pretty good after a few weeks. Clearly, he is not a clinician. Clearly, he doesn't see Lyme disease patients. The testing is not reliable. At its best performance, the test, when it is subjected to