Retired physician making headlines as patient advocate for Lyme disease

A retired Nova Scotia physician turned Lyme disease crusader is trying to convince naturopaths from British Columbia, where they can prescribe antibiotics for more than a month, to do clinics on Canada's East Coast, then mail filled scripts back from the West Coast.“I’m awaiting a response because I’ve become more of a patient advocate if anything, and I’m trying to see if I can at least get something that is a little better than, you know, a patient travelling to the (United States) or to B.C.,” Dr. Ben Boucher told The Chronicle Herald this week.A growing numbers of people with Lyme disease in Canada's Maritime provinces are forced to drive to Maine or the U.S. in search of antibiotics because Canadian doctors won't write scripts for more than a month, said Dr. Boucher, who practised family medicine for 35 years on Cape Breton Island.He said that in addition to his regular practice, he treated some 200 Lyme disease sufferers from across Canada (though mostly from the Maritimes) over the past decade.Dr. Boucher told the Halifax daily that he went on sick leave in 2013 after some doctors in New Brunswick filed complaints that he had interfered with their treatment of patients.He said he decided to retire last year, a claim confirmed by spokeswoman Pattie LaCroix from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia.Dr. Boucher could not be reached for comment by The Medical Post.He is no stranger however to Lyme disease medical experts or patients advocates in Canada.He appears regularly at conferences on the subject, including at the second biennial Maritime tick and tick-vectored disease research conference in Moncton, N.B. in May, 2015.Dr. Boucher reportedly broke down during an educative presentation, and apologized to listeners for having retired from his medical practice.“I know I left a lot of people in a lurch,” Dr. Boucher is quoted as saying in IHP Magazine“It was just too much, dealing with the college.”Dr. Boucher told The Chronicle Herald this that he intends to raise the need for long-term antibiotics prescriptions at the Federal Framework on Lyme Disease Conference in Ottawa on May 15-16.Organized by the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation, the conference will feature provincial and territorial health ministers, physicians, patients and other stakeholders.Dr. Boucher suggested he was not invited as a presenter at the conference because of pressure from specialist groups like the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada.

Retired physician making headlines as patient advocate for Lyme disease

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics