What do you think of our health system prompted by hawks thread about the s

[margomeoz]

With all the travelling Australians do tropical diseases are becoming rife here but our doctors know nothing about them.

This I know for a fact.

One friend of mine ended up with a worm inside her that lay dormant for 6 months then she got cold like symptoms and the runs plus stomach pain.

Doctors here kept giving her antibiotics which did nothing for her, she was lucky enough to go back to Bali

ended up in hospital because she could stand the pain no longer, they were going to remove her appendix

which she still has but they found a worm which had eaten most of her large intestines.

Had she not gone to Bali she would be dead.

Then there is 2 other friends of mine who came with me 2 months ago

Both ended up with a thing called chikungunya a really nasty disease caused by an infected mossie,

This originated in Africa and moved to Asia, the best you can hope for with this is to be left with severe

arthritis.

A girl who works for me has Limes disease which she caught here as she has never been out of Australia.

I was pretty lucky and only got bitten by a spider and got cellulitis in my right leg but it will get better I hope.

But my point is the doctors here do not recognize any of those diseases here they have to send blood to America to find out what is wrong and they deny we even have limes disease in Australia.

With our multi cultural society I feel they should all be taking courses in tropical diseases and doing a lot more to find cures for them.

[monman12]

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ohp-lyme-disease.htm

SP: "Limes Disease can be caused by ticks common in lots of areas of Australia so I thought it would be well known by our medicos."

That would not appear to be fact!

University of Sydney Department of medical Entomology 

None of the mammal species identified as reservoir hosts in the northern hemisphere are present in Australia. There are reports of spirochaetes in Australian native animals, and a local mammal could be a reservoir host for an indigenous spirochaete that occasionally infects humans through a tick vector and produces a clinical syndrome similar to LD; however, no spirochaete was detected in the 12,000 ticks or animals processed.

Summary

The existence of LD in Australia will remain controversial until an organism is isolated from a local patient and fully characterised, or until a tick-borne organism can be shown to be responsible for the human infection. If it exists it shares few of the epidemiological or clinical characteristics of US or European patterns of LD.

[polksaladallie]

To those who are interested.......

There is going to be a discussion on Lyme disease on Radio National Breakfast after 8am this morning.  The preamble said that health authorities in Australia continue to say there is no evidence that it is in this country.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/lyme-a-four-letter-word/4681070

[polksaladallie]

More

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2013-05-12/4675072