In Chernomorsk, Odesa Region, a seventh-grader from the Aleksandrovsky School was hospitalized after a tick bite. Anna Gumennaya, a local resident, reported this on Facebook.
Currently, a 12-year-old boy is in critical condition in intensive care at a regional hospital in Odessa.
"Now they are removing brain swelling. The boy was paralyzed. Doctors expect that the treatment will be difficult and long. The family has a difficult financial situation. The year before last, my mother died after a serious illness," she wrote.
Note that cases of seasonal tick bites in the Odesa region are registered from April to September. The incidence of tick-borne viral encephalitis is not typical for Odessa: the last case was registered more than 30 years ago. The most common disease that can be transmitted by ticks in our territory is tick-borne borreliosis, or Lyme disease.
Most often, ticks are found on leaves and bushes at a height of 0,5-1 m above the ground near paths laid by animals or humans, in rubble, dry land.
The bite of a tick is insidious in that a person practically does not feel it, since, piercing the skin with its proboscis, the tick injects an anesthetic substance together with saliva. Only on the second or third day does the bite site become slightly painful. Ticks often choose places on a person's body with the thinnest skin and closely adjacent blood vessels - scalp, ears, groin, elbow and knee bends, arms and legs.
To prevent tick-borne infections, the following recommendations should be followed:
1. When going to the forest, on a picnic, the clothes should be light, with long, tight-fitting sleeves and long pants. It is better to tuck the pants into the shoes. Be sure to wear a hat.
2. Treat the clothes with a mite repellant.
3. When moving through the forest, try to stay in the middle of the path, beware of tall grass and bushes. For recreation, it is better to choose dry pine forests with sandy soil, areas without grass.
4. Every two hours and immediately after leaving the forest, conduct inspections to remove crawling insects and ticks from your clothes or body.
5. After returning home, you need to undress in the corridor, shake out your clothes thoroughly and once again examine the bodies of all the participants of the nature hike.
6. If you find a tick on the body, it must be removed. If you are in the city, contact your family doctor or the surgical office of the consulting and diagnostic center.
7. In no case should you crush ticks, you can get infected when you crush them, especially if there are scratches on your hands. If you accidentally crush a tick, you should immediately wash your hands with soap.
8. After a tick bite, it is necessary to consult a doctor for observation, if necessary, for the appointment of emergency prophylaxis. You should also monitor your health, check your temperature, and examine your skin. In the event of the appearance of signs of the disease - an increase in body temperature, redness or swelling at the site of the bite - it is necessary to contact an infectious disease doctor for the appointment of a laboratory examination and appropriate treatment based on its results.
When bitten by ticks, it is prohibited:
- burn the tick;
— apply compresses to the bite site, lubricate with liquids;
- crush or pick up a tick with bare fingers.
Laboratory diagnostics of tick-borne infections in Odesa is carried out by the virological laboratory of the Odesa Regional Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine at the address: Starosennaya ploshchad, 33.
The laboratory conducts a blood serum test to determine immunoglobulins M and G to viruses of tick-borne encephalitis and Lyme disease. It is also possible to study by the PCR method for the detection of tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis viruses.
For research, the body of the mite or its fragments must be placed in a tightly closed dish, in which a napkin slightly moistened with water has previously been placed, and sent to the virological laboratory.
