Your help is urgently needed!

As you know, last week at the Wall of Hope event in Toronto, a +1,400-signature petition was submitted to the Ontario Legislature on a number of Lyme-related issues. The government is now required to officially respond to that petition. While this matter is on the Minister's desk, we want to send another clear and strong message to the Minister to let her know what we are thinking. Note that as of earlier this month, we now have a new Health Minister, the Honourable Deborah Matthews -- the letters have been updated to reflect this change.

To that end, Lyme Action has prepared 2 letters that we would like you to send to the Minister. The letters are accessible via the links below in Word format (drop an email to us if you need a different format). Feel free to customize the content of your letters, but be sure to add your own complete name, mailing address and signature before you send it off. The letters can be mailed, cut-and-paste into an email, or faxed.

1. Letter to Ontario Minister of Health re: CPSO
This letter highlights the problem of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) persecuting Lyme literate doctors. In so doing, the CPSO is interfering with the doctor-patient relationship and threatening our access to treatment. It is written specifically about Dr.Krop (who has not had one single patient complaint against him!), as his investigation is currently before the CPSO. But as you know, this problem impacted Dr. Murakami in BC last year and your doctor could be next!

2. Letter to Ontario Minister of Health re: Bill 171 & Bill 179
Bill 171 deals with mandatory reporting of doctors (by other doctors). We are particularly concerned that the CPSO will misuse the powers of this Bill to persecute doctors involved in using ILADS protocols for treating Lyme, as well as practitioners of alternative and complimentary medicine. Bill 179 proposes to give the Minister further oversight of the CPSO. Given the CPSO's track record in persecuting Lyme doctors, this oversight is long overdue!

Please contact Lyme Action if you have any problems with the above links and we can email the files directly to you. Once you have opened the files linked above, you can save them to your computer by selecting File, Download file as, Word.

Let's make our voices heard on these important issues. You are encouraged to send these letters this week given the time-sensitive nature of both Dr. Krop's investigation and our petition before the Minister.

Thank you for your ongoing support -- together we are making a difference!

Wall of Hope 2009 - Toronto

Thank you to all who helped to make Thursday's event a success! Here is a sampling of photos received from attendees. Thanks to those who have sent them in. Please send in your best ones and we can add them to the album.



This post will be updated as more material becomes available. To begin with, here is coverage from the CTV National News as shown Sunday 20 September 2009. The version on the CTV website can be found here (but it doesn't include the intro by Sandie Rinaldo you will see below). And here is the accompanying written report on CTV.ca.



Here is a link to send feedback to CTV -- please let them know you appreciate this coverage.

"They are ticked off, and they want answers..." That is the opening line of an A-Channel News report about the Wall of Hope event in Victoria, BC. Here is an email to contact the BC Ministry of Health Services and let them know what you think about the outdated and misguided information given by Minister Kevin Falcon in this interview. The protocol Minister Falcon refers to is, of course, the IDSA guidelines whose validity were seriously called into question subsequent to the antitrust investigation against the IDSA concluded by the Connecticut Attorney General in 2008. And yet our health agencies continue to cling to these narrow guidelines, completely ignoring other opinions such as those from the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS).



On the day of the Wall of Hope event at Queen's Park, a petition was submitted to the Ontario Legislature regarding Lyme and Chronic Lyme disease issues in Ontario. The petition addresses issues of failing to acknowledge Lyme as endemic in Canada, inadequate testing and inadequate physician training. It was signed by more than 1,400 concerned persons from across the province. The Government of Ontario is officially required to respond to this petition within 24 sitting days of the House. The video below, courtesy of the Legislature's Broadcast and Recording Service, is of the petition presentation in the Legislature.