Tick Bite Prevention Week will be running again this year from 11 – 17 April. It is estimated that 3,000 people a year contract Lyme Disease from a tick bite every year.
Walkers or others involved in outdoor activities can be at a high risk of tick bites, particularly when heading through countryside or parks where there are sheep or deer and bracken which can attract ticks.
Tick Bite Prevention Week offers a number of simple precautions can help to keep you safe including tucking trousers into socks, avoiding dense undergrowth or using a stick to bash away ticks first, and checking yourself or your “tick buddy” for ticks at the end of a days walk.
Ray Mears also pops up on the Tick Bite Prevention Week website to recount his top ten anti-tick tips and there are plenty of photos of ticks and information on the best way to remove them.
Lyme Disease is potentially a very serious disease which can cause a number of long term health problems including kidney damage and joint problems. Diagnostic tests are not 100% reliable and symptoms may not appear until a while after the tick bite. The disease is on the increase due to a number of factors including: warmer winters and moist summers which have allow more ticks to survive; and increase in some animals that are favoured by ticks as hosts; a reduction in sheep-dipping, motivated by concerns over the carcinogenic effects of the active ingredients on human health, and cost implications for farmers, which has reduced the effective control of ticks; and an increase in the number of people taking part in outdoor activities.