Lyme Australia: Recognition & Awareness - LARA News

Time To Recognise Lyme Clock

Sun, 29 May 2016 03:23:49 GMT

The Time To Recognise Lyme Clock (pictured above) and the brief stories of the people pictured on the Clock that were presented to the Senate Inquiry Committee in Brisbane on April 15th 2016

On behalf of Lyme Australia Recognition & Awareness and Global Lyme & Invisible Illness Organisation Karen Smith (Co-founder of GLiIO) was allocated 45minutes to speak / present at the Senate Inquiry hearing in Brisbane on the 15th of April.

At the end of Karen’s opening statement to the Senate Committee with regards to the clock presentation Karen noted: "To close Lyme Australia Recognition & Awareness (LARA) and Global Lyme & Invisible Illness Organisations (GLiIO's) allocated session today, Matt Chant will finish with a presentation on behalf of all those who have lost loved ones, and all those who are living with Lyme & Co., The Time to Recognise Lyme’ Clock project aims to show the human side of this disease and the devastation its denial and lack of treatment and medical care is creating".

For more information about the clock, and the people on it See Global Lyme & Invisible Illness Org Website: Time To Recognise Lyme Aust Senate 2016: http://www.globallymeinvisibleillness.org/time-to-recognise-lyme-clock-aust-senate-2016.html

A brief background regarding the Senate Inquiry:
In November 2015, the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report: "Growing evidence of an emerging tick-borne disease that causes a Lyme like illness for many Australian patients"

There was over 1000 submissions to the Inquiry, and a number of hearings held around Australia. For further information click on the following link to see the Parliament of Australia website regarding this Inquiry: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Lyme-like_Illness

Remembering Scott Chant

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:16:31 GMT

Remembering Scott Chant: Very many people are wishing to pay their respects to Scott and his family and his funeral service/ celebration of life – however due to distance, illness etc., they are not able to attend the service in person. This page has been set up for a central location for those that would like to light a candle, pay their respects, share a fond memory of Scott, to do so online together.

Facebook "Event Page" : Remembering Scott Chant

If you are in Brisbane : Scott’s funeral service is being held on Thursday the 18th of February, 11am at Albany Creek Memorial Park. Scott’s family has welcomed those that wish to come and pay their respects to do so.

They have mentioned: “We would like his funeral to be a celebration of Scott’s life so please feel welcome to wear colour and whatever you are most comfortable in. There will be a donation box at the service for anyone wishing to contribute to the Lyme Disease Association of Australia.
For those of you wishing to celebrate Scott’s life following the funeral, we have reserved an area at the Eaton’s Hill Hotel from 12.30.

Scott was a much loved and respected member of the Australian Lyme community. The compassion, generosity of spirit and thoughtfulness he showed to others in the community was amazing, and his loss has been profoundly felt. We can only imagine that the loss would be felt a hundred fold by those that were proud to call him a son, brother, uncle, friend.

Scott fought for recognition and treatment of Lyme Borreliosis in Australia. He had high hopes that the science would "see the truth revealed". Sadly Scott's determination to see Lyme recognised and his love of life and his family was overshadowed by his need to escape his constant pain, and he is now another Australian fighting this battle to gain his angel wings far too soon.

Thoughts with Scott's family, friends, all those that knew and loved him at this extremely sad time <3

Prime Minister's Afternoon Tea: Scott & Lyme Borreliosis

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 16:46:05 GMT

Karen Smith (Co-founder) of Global Lyme & Invisible Illness Organisation (GLiIO) will be attending an afternoon tea with the Prime Minister of Australia this afternoon (Monday 15th February). Thank you to Federal Member for Dawson George Christensen for the opportunity to attend this event and represent people living with Lyme Borreliosis and other vector-borne Illness.

Updated : Click Here to See Facebook Post on the Afternoon Tea.

The Post updating how the afternoon tea went garnered a lot of attention, with over 630 'likes', 120+ shares and more than 135 comments from the Australian and Global Lyme community. Thank you to everyone for all the support for myself and for the families of those we have lost.

On Behalf of International Red Shoe Day: A day of Remembrance division of GLiIO, Karen will present Scott Chant’s Senate Inquiry submission that was written not long before his passing last week. Scott was a much loved and respected member of the Australian Lyme community and his loss has been profoundly felt by many. Please keep his family and friends in your hearts at this difficult time.

Along with Scott’s Submission Karen will also be presenting a folder with research that she has written, as well as links to articles written by other organisations/associations and information provided by those that were able to do so at short notice. Thank you to Multi Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome Inc.,(MSIDS), Sarcoidosis Lyme Australia, Ruby Red Trust and Chrysalis.

Before co-founding GLiIO with American friend and Advocate Lisa Hilton, the majority of Karen’s advocacy and Research was performed under the banner of Lyme Australia Recognition and Awareness (LARA): http://www.lymeaustralia.com/laras-aims--work.html

One of the Research articles, written in 2012 being presented is: Lyme Disease: A Counter Argument to the Australian Government’s Denial: http://www.lymeaustralia.com/counter-argument-k-smith.html

Scott's Senate Inquiry Submission: http://www.lymeaustralia.com/scott-chant-feb-2016

More about Red Shoe Day : http://www.globallymeinvisibleillness.org/red-shoe-day--a-day-of-remembrance.html

Di Ellis battled Lyme2surf again: Plz vote4her CV Sportsperson of Year

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 07:23:08 GMT

Australian (NSW), Di Ellis, is in the running for sportsperson for the Clarence Valley Sportsperson of the Year. Di is a wonderful lady whose strong spirit has seen her raising awareness for Lyme, helping others get through the journey, and re-gaining her life back. Di overcame many years of illness to Place 3rd in the over 35's woman's group for the Aussie Longboard Titles earlier this year.
Please get behind Di - to say what a remarkable achievement - and in addition raise more awareness of Lyme.

Vote by going to the following Link: http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/news/two-weeks-until-sports-awards-sports-awards/2823876/

And click on Di's Name Nomination (Shown in small picture below), about 3/4's of the way down the page.
THREE VOTES PER PERSON are allowed - Simply refresh the page - and use all three votes at once :) Thank you in advance for the support!!

Voting ends: 5pm Wednesday, 11th November. Australian Time.

Updating LARA's Home "landing page" to a Blog page - rather than standard website page

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:24:31 GMT

On starting back at updating the website late July 2015, I made the decision to update the Homepage to a blog page, rather than a standard website page. This will hopefully allow archiving / searching of information with regards to news and upcoming events in the future.

As I am adding to the various sections throughout the website ; you will notice a variety of blog and standard website pages scattered throughout. The research sections will remain standard webpages, as will numerous others, whilst those pages that may be better suited to allow interaction/ comments will be changed/ added as blog pages.

As noted back in 2014, (on the old standard homepage) "Due to a relapse in early 2014 I am currently undergoing further intensive treatment - As such - The update of website and information will be much slower than previously expected. Thank you for your understanding" My health has been up and down throughout 2014 and for the first few months of 2015 took a rather large downward turn again (since discovered aspergillums / mould exposure was the cause) and I am working with my doctor on getting "back to baseline" before focusing on moving forward in the other areas of health still affected by long term infection.

Through the website update / transition period you may note that some hyperlinks do not work - as well as changing/adding new links, this is due to when I changed the original domain name from lymeaustraliarecognitionandawareness to simply lymeaustralia. I am working through page by page to correct; sorry for the inconvenience - and thank you for your patience as I work on having these up to date as soon as possible.

Warm regards, Karen.