Lyme disease is on the rise: Here?s how to protect your kids from ticks
Photo: iStockphoto
Last July, a day after a family outing to the zoo, Crystal Cochrane of Edmonton was pulling five-year-old Mikayla?s hair into a ponytail when she felt a small sesame-seed-sized bump at her daughter?s hairline, near the nape of her neck. When combing didn?t dislodge it, Crystal looked closer and discovered a tick had firmly attached itself to Mikayla?s head. ?I panicked,? Crystal recalls. ?We had heard about Lyme disease, and knew it was bad.? Wanting to know for certain whether the bite might make Mikayla sick, the Cochranes headed to the Stollery Children?s Hospital, with the tick (which they had carefully removed and placed in a sealed container) in hand.
Lyme disease, an illness that?s transmitted via the bite of an infected deer tick, is relatively rare but has been on the rise in recent years in Canada (from 144 cases in 2009 to 917 in 2015), with children between five and nine years being more commonly affected than most other age groups. If not treated in its early stages, Lyme disease can cause problems, such as meningitis, temporary weakness of muscles in the face and arthritis. So what do you need to know to protect your kids" Learn where they lurk
Do you live in an area where there?s an established population of western black-legged or black-legged ticks" The former is found in parts of BC, while the latter lives in certain (in some cases, expanding) areas of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The proportion of...
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