How to protect yourself from tick-borne borreliosis?

Ixodic tick-borne borreliosis is an acute infectious disease with a predominant lesion of the skin, joints, central nervous system, and cardiovascular system.

Non-specific individual (personal) protection of people includes:

• it is not recommended to sit down and lie down on the grass; bring freshly picked plants, outerwear and other items that may have ticks on them into the room;
• a person, being in a natural focus of tick-borne borreliosis during the season of insect activity, should periodically inspect his clothes and body independently or with the help of other people, and remove the detected ticks. Ticks rarely stick to open parts of the human body, most often they crawl under clothes and choose a place for sucking for a long time (on average 30 minutes). Therefore, it is advisable to conduct self - and mutual inspections to detect clinging ticks every 30 minutes.
• after returning from the forest or walking, it is necessary to carefully examine dogs and other animals to detect and remove ticks that have clung and stuck to them.
• wearing special clothing (in the absence of special clothing, dress in such a way as to facilitate a quick inspection to detect ticks: wear plain and light clothing; tuck trousers into boots, knee socks or socks with a tight elastic band, the upper part of the clothing into trousers; the cuffs of the sleeves should fit snugly to the arm; the collar of the shirt and trousers should not have a fastener or have a tight fastener under which a tick cannot crawl; put a hood sewn to a shirt, jacket or tuck hair under a scarf, hat);
• use repellents (repellents that treat open areas of the body and clothing) and acaricidal agents that treat clothing, and the tick, once on the treated area, loses the ability to stick to the skin, falls.

Remember! There is no active or passive immunization against tick-borne borreliosis in Russia!

Only timely treatment for medical help significantly reduces the risk of developing the disease.

Chief Freelance Specialist in Infectious Diseases
health departments of the Lipetsk region
Sirotinkina Lilia Viktorovna