Lyme-disease carrying ticks are a huge and growing problem across Pennsylvania.
Outdoorsmen and women, you’re largely on your own.
Scientists know a lot about the ticks that carry Lyme disease. They know a bit about how to, perhaps, treat deer that carry the insects. And they may – or may not – have reliable tests for detecting it.
What no one knows apparently is where to get the money to do anything about any of it.
Pennsylvania is home to lots of ticks and lots of Lyme disease. It’s led the nation in confirmed cases five of the last six years, according to the state’s Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Committee.
Given that, the Pennsylvania legislature in 2014 passed Act 83. It created the Task Force on Lyme Disease and Related Tick-Borne Diseases.
The group’s goal was to look at Lyme and offer suggestions on how to stop its spread. It made 16 recommendations across three categories – prevention, surveillance and education and awareness — ranging taking preventative measures at schools in high-risk areas to better educating physicians about how to detect the disease.
That report came out in 2015.
It did not outline what it might cost to implement those recommendations, however. So lawmakers asked their own Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to figure that out and “provide a useful estimate of costs for key recommendations.”
Its report came out this fall.
What it makes clear, above all else, is that fighting Lyme disease will be hugely expensive, and that no one anywhere has devoted that kind of money to the battle or even figured out where it might come from.
The budget committee made 11 major points.
In one, for example, it noted that it’s possible to reduce tick populations by 90 percent by installing “4-poster” systems. Those are bins full of corn with insecticide-treated paint rollers at their corners. Tick-carrying deer that come to feed on the corn brush up against the rollers and are essentially coated with tick repellent.
The cost of installing such systems at public schools and parks would cost $4.4 million, though, the committee said. Annual maintenance would be another $2.7 million.
That’s not all.
Doing an epidemiologic study to figure out where best in the state to install such systems and/or take other measures would cost at least another $8.8 million.
None of that money has historically been available.
“No state has devoted significant state resources to fund Lyme disease research, at least in recent years,” the committee’s report determined.
Some federal funding is available. But it’s not much and is distributed unevenly, it seems.
The committee noted that Rhode Island has gotten $804 in federal dollars for each case of confirmed Lyme. Pennsylvania, despite having almost twice as many cases as any other state in recent years, has received $4.60 per confirmed case.
There’s not even much money for telling people to be on the lookout for Lyme.
“Lyme disease public awareness campaigns in other states have received very little state funding,” the committee concluded.
Instead, it added, states have relied on free advertising and their own health department websites to reach the public and even doctors.
Doing more would be expensive. The committee estimated the cost of sending brochures to doctors, followed up by a visit from someone knowledgeable about Lyme, at $2.2 million annually. Conducting a comprehensive five-year public awareness campaign would cost another $11.5 million.
And requiring automatic electronic reporting of Lyme disease cases to better track it? That could cost $60 million.
Lawmakers did not say how or where they might come up with any of that money.
So keep your eyes open for ticks. You’re likely on your own.
