App which helps to combat Lyme Disease to launch in Inverness today
The app will help users identify ticks that carry the disease, educate them on how to remove ticks and how to spot the early signs.
A new mobile phone app is set to be launched today in Inverness that will help to prevent and diagnose the disease early on.
LymeApp will provide interactive maps of Lyme Disease and the ticks that carry it. Providing quality assured information and advice.
Highland woman Morvern-May MacCallum was housebound for eight years after being bitten by a tick without realising it when she was 14. She would then have her health decline over the coming months without a proper diagnosis.
She even had to drop out of school and was mostly bed-bound right into her early twenties.
Morvern-May is stressing that detecting the disease early is incredibly important to avoid lasting damage similar to what she has been left with.
Morvern-May told MFR:
"It's so vital that people are diagnosed early, because if people get that initial diagnosis then it's quite likely it can be eradicated from the body."
"If it's left un-diagnosed, it quite often becomes a life long condition, which is where I am at now"
Morvern-May believes the app could be crucial for many people and feels the element of teaching users how to remove ticks is very important, she said:
"It's very important people know how to properly remove a tick, I've heard of all sorts of methods people try, which only do more damage."
"When done incorrectly you stress the tick which causes it to regurgitate its stomach contents back into your body - and because it drinks blood, it's putting dirty blood into your body."
The official launch is set to take place at the centre for health science in Inverness today between noon and half past two.