Suffolk bill seeks stronger effort to control ticks
Lyme disease affects a human?s body in stages, said Bruce Hirsch, a physician at North Shore University Hospital, one of which includes a rash. Sometimes called a ?target rash? or a ?bull's-eye rash,? it has rings of circles, which can vary in color and pattern. Credit: Newsday File /Bill Davis
Suffolk County Legis. Jay Schneiderman, noting that Lyme disease is 300 times more common than West Nile, wants the county’s Division of Vector Control to come up with a plan to control tick-borne diseases.
The agency, which spends $2.5 million a year to kill mosquitoes, has done a good job controlling the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, Schneiderman (I-Montauk) said, and should be just as active in reducing Lyme disease and other diseases carried by ticks, especially on the East End, where the heaviest concentrations of ticks are found.
He and North Fork Legis. Al Krupski (D-Cutchogue) have introduced a bill requiring the agency to file an annual report showing what has to be done to reduce tick-borne illnesses, what methods should be used and how to evaluate the work. Schneiderman said it would probably take the bill two months to work its way through committees.
Suffolk had 689 reported cases of Lyme disease in 2012, the largest of any county in New York State, and Nassau had 56.
Southold officials recently moved a planned Thursday community forum on deer overpopulation to a recreation center in Peconic because more than 150 people were expected to show up.
