Clearlake >> On Saturday at 2 p.m. the Clear Lake State Park Interpretive Association’s Summer Speaker Series continues with a presentation by Lia Gaertner on ticks and Lyme disease. The presentation will be in the visitor center and is a “must attend” for anyone who spends time outdoors.
Lyme disease is one of the fastest growing vector-borne infectious diseases in the United States and is a potentially debilitating infection caused by bacteria transmitted through the bite of an infected tick to people and pets. If caught early, most cases of Lyme disease can be effectively treated, but it is commonly misdiagnosed due to lack of awareness and unreliable diagnostic tests. There are approximately 329,000 new cases of Lyme disease each year, according to statistics released in 2015 by the Centers for Disease Control. As a result of the difficulty in diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, as many as one million Americans may be suffering from the impact of its debilitating long-term symptoms and complications, according to Bay Area Lyme Foundation estimates.
This presentation at the Clear Lake State Park will provide information about tick ecology, tick-borne infections in California, and how to prevent and address tick bites.
Gaertner has experienced, first hand, the obstacles to effective diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne illness. She was first bitten by a Lyme-carrying tick in 1998, but was misdiagnosed until 2008. Gaertner is on the science committee at the Bay Area Lyme Foundation. She is also a principal at Halteres Associates, a bioscience consulting company, and she has more than 20 years of international experience in scientific and field research, technical writing, teaching, and project management.
Gaertner earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental science with minors in ethnobotany and agroecology from University of California, Berkeley and her master’s degree in ethnobotany from Cornell University.
The Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a national organization committed to making Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure, is the leading public not-for-profit sponsor of Lyme disease research in the U.S.
