The Chatham-Kent Board of Health is looking to revamp their Vector-Born Disease (VBD) program.
VBD diseases are infectious diseases which are usually spread by mosquitoes and ticks. The two known to the Chatham-Kent area are Lyme disease and West Nile virus.
Public Health Inspector Erin Courtice says they're expecting this new strategy to take about a year to complete.
Some recommended changes include conducting tick surveillance (tick dragging) in specific areas, educating the public, and monitoring trends.
One of the recommendations also involves the discontinuation of testing on blacklegged ticks from areas they are prone to -- like Rondeau Provincial Park.
"We're still providing the same service, they're just not going to get sent to a lab because the test results take three months to get back," she says. "They really don't provided any extra information for us and any sort of treatment recommendations are already done in that time."
Courtice says there are no immediate concerns regarding VBD, adding it's hard to get a 100% accurate read because not everyone who becomes infected goes to the health clinic, but judging from last year's findings Courtice says it was a good year.
"We had zero positive mosquito traps, zero west Nile human cases and zero Lyme disease cases reported to the health unit for 2016."
Courtice adds it's important to be educated on VBD and take personal preventive measures.
As for the strategy, she says they have compared Chatham-Kent's VBD program with other public health units and the municipality's program is "pretty well up to par".
