Also see: Professor of Microbiology: Lyme is most misunderstood [maligned] disease since AIDS [and far more prevalent]
http://canlyme.com/2014/11/09/professor-of-microbiology-lyme-is-most-misunderstood-maligned-disease-since-aids-and-far-more-prevalent/ for more corroboration of this startling fact.
Lymerick
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August 27, 2013 5:00 am • By Christen Croley, The Sentinel

Some health officials say Lyme Disease is an epidemic as widespread as AIDS — and without greater awareness, the disease may prove just as destructive.

Last week CDC officials said Lyme Disease affects ten times as many people — up to 300,000 across the United States — than previously known. The organization cited Pennsylvania as the leading state for reported cases nationwide.

“They finally admitted it,” said Dr. Leo J. Shea III, president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. “It was the same thing with AIDS. For years, it was not acknowledged as a real thing and for years, people died.”

Despite the growing population of infected, the healthcare industry — from physicians to insurance companies and researchers — remains divided on how to treat the chronic disease.

Shea says ILADS, a non-profit dedicated to creating an industry-wide treatment standard, formed a decade ago after the CDC and other health officials dismissed long-term, reoccurring symptoms of Lyme patients.

The lack of consensus means some patients, like 26-year-old Nichele Bonsanto of Carlisle, spend years bouncing between dozens of doctors before receiving a diagnosis or treatment.

“I’ve probably been to 20 or 30 doctors,” she said. “Something was always seriously wrong and nobody could ever give me any real answer.”

Bonsanto says she found a tick on her head as a 6-year-old living in suburban New Jersey and spent the rest of her childhood battling one illness after another — including bronchitis, migraines and laryngitis. As a teenager, she developed joint pain, insomnia and depression. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, Bonsanto says she lost the ability to walk and has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital five times.

“There’s a whole lot of people with this disease and we’re all dealing with the same things,” she said. “We’ve all been to so many doctors. It’s being ignored and brushed aside and we are being told we are crazy.”

SNIP