Volledig verslag van de vergaderingen

Donderdag 15 november 2018 - Straatsburg

6.3. Ziekte van Lyme (borreliose) (B8-0514/2018)

Mündliche Erklärungen zur Abstimmung

  Lynn Boylan (GUE/NGL). – Mr President, I welcome today’s vote on Lyme disease and the calls made for greater ambition to improve diagnostics treatment and prevention of this disease. It will help give a voice to all those who suffer from Lyme and associated tick-borne diseases.

Infected ticks and Lyme disease are spreading geographically, driven by climate change and land-use change. Symptoms can go unnoticed and often doctors are not trained in looking for those symptoms, thereby delaying medical intervention. Current diagnostic tests are also not reliable enough. The antibody-based only test is 30% to 50% accurate and the PCR test is only 62% accurate. This means that the actual number of Lyme cases is much higher than what is believed.

It is crucial to focus our attention on the sharing of best practice, patient—centred research and patient—centric guidelines. Patients must be involved in any new developments. I welcome the inclusion of Lyme disease on the EU list of communicable diseases and epidemiological surveillance to facilitate the monitoring of the EU distribution of the disease.

  Rory Palmer (S&D). – Mr President, Public Health England estimate that there were 3 000 cases of Lyme disease last year. There is a quadrupling in the number of cases in recent years in the UK, and that is reflected in other Member States as well.

This is an extremely debilitating, serious disease. We need to see more research, more investment in treatments, a broadening and a deepening of the medical knowledge of this disease, and that is why I support that work taking place at European Union level.

It makes sense to do that, and I hope that going forward, whatever happens in Westminster today or indeed, in the coming weeks and months, that the UK can remain an active, full partner of that work and indeed, wider medical research work at a European level. That is in the interests of patients in the UK and across the European Union as well.