Whether you give the credit to Napoleon or Confucius, pictures do tell their own story, and its usually several thousand words long.  Even if it is my nature to be vociferous, I feel these graphs and data images say what needs to be said.  

 

Our PHAC (Public Health Agency of Canada) said they want to know what is going on with Canadian Lyme patients.  They spent lots of money of the media spectacle May 15th-17th,2016 in Ottawa' in efforts to look like they were taking the issue seriously.  However, like many things, after all is said and done: there is much more said and left undone.  As a participant of the Lyme Conference farce, I was one of many who were left feeling hopeful that change would occur.  Unfortunately, that hope was short lived, as I began to understand the depth of outside influence on policies and guideline formation.  I didn't understood the financial motivation for status quo(a whole other article...) and how little the PHAC considered the information presented at the conference.  This became painfully clear when PHAC released Lyme Diseases best practices guidelines finalized in May, 2017.

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As expected, PHAC continues to support outdated guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the U.S.  Regardless of all the scientific and experiential information they received before/during/after the Ottawa Conference none was considered or included.  What happened next was the HESA Health Committee meeting in which again, peer reviewed scientific data was presented to suggest that PHAC's new guidelines were detrimental to the health and welfare of all Canadians.   

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I am not positive, but I believe that the PHAC meeting in Ottawa on Sept 13th, 2017 is because HESA told them they better try again.  Canadians can only hope that those selected to speak on our behalf are heard.  I personally hope that Lyme treatment guidelines will be opened up options and a variety of treatment modalities, that the current extremely restrictive CDC guidelines be removed as the only choice.  Patient preference should be an essential deciding factor, not based on some antiquated inaccurate Big Pharm funded forced IDSA recommended guidelines. 

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Here are graph results of 8 of the survey questions. I tried to keep personal interpretation out of these images to allow for the reader to form their own opinion and interpretation, however I did incorporate information left within the OTHER answer box given into the general options given.  As this information varied greatly, some answers responses are not included.  Please note the (#s) added onto graphs.  

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This is what Canadians surveyed had to say about their experiences with Lyme Disease, in the summer of 2017.