Please join us for a Forum on Lyme Disease that Congressman Frank Wolf will be holding on Monday, May 3rd at 7 p.m. at Heritage High School in Leesburg. Delegate Tom Rust and I worked on a Bill this year that would have allowed physicians more latitude in prescribing medication and alternative treatments for treating Lyme Disease. Dozens of people, including many of our constituents, came to Richmond for the hearing on this measure and they provided powerful testimony about the devastating impact of Lyme Disease on their lives. While the measure did not pass this year, it was carried over to next year's session and we will continue to press these efforts. Officials from the Health Department committed, at the hearings on our bills, to increase their efforts monitoring Lyme Disease and working with us on this important health concern.
Please see Congressman Wolf's statement below:
I want to make you aware of a free forum I am hosting to educate area residents about ticks and Lyme disease this coming Monday, May 3, at 7 p.m. at Heritage High School in Loudoun County. More than 300 people attended a similar event my office sponsored in August 2008 in Loudoun.
Speakers will include Dr. David Goodfriend, director of the Loudoun County Health Department, and Dr. Christine Coussens with the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. IOM is putting together a workshop to assess the state of the science of Lyme disease and other-tick borne diseases. Coussens will report on the progress of the project. Legislation approved in Congress last year requires both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to step up their research on Lyme disease.
The forum will address how to check and protect yourself from ticks, what to do if you find one, and the symptoms of acute Lyme disease and its treatment. A 13-minute version of the film "Under Our Skin" also will be shown.
For more information about the forum, contact my Washington office at (202) 225-5136 or online at wolf.house.gov/Lyme.