from the south-west, a little slowly from the south—west, a little bit of rain for northern ireland, wales and south—west of england. just the art show further east, most places staying dry, hot and though, temperatures continue to rise. there could be some heavy rain and thunderstorms too. hello, you're watching bbc news. the headlines this hour. it has emerged that police were called to the home of conservative leadership candidate borisjohnson of conservative leadership candidate boris johnson and his of conservative leadership candidate borisjohnson and his partner in the early hours of friday morning after neighbours heard a loud argument. jeremy hunt has challenged mr johnson to take part in a television debate earlier than planned, before ballot papers for the party leadership contest are sent out. the pairare due to leadership contest are sent out. the pair are due to depart in the first nationwide hustings event in birmingham this afternoon. the foreign office has sent one of its

ministers to iran to call for an urgent de—escalation of tensions in the region. in an interview, president trump admits he became within minutes of launching air strikes. churches are discussing opening their doors after school to act as safe havens for young people who are at risk of becoming victims of knife crime. more news at the top of knife crime. more news at the top of the hour. thanks for your company this morning. don't forget, we will have the first of those life conservative party hustings events here on the bbc news channel. now it is time tojoin here on the bbc news channel. now it is time to join the investigation of the spread of lyme disease. more and more of us are catching lyme disease. one tiny tick under the skin can cause debilitating illness. nine years on from having started treatment, my life is still completely dominated by this disease. are some gps too slow to diagnose and to give treatment that can stop it in its tracks? i went to the doctor, and she said, "no!

you haven't got lyme disease. "there's none of that around here, you know." and are doctors in denial about how patients can suffer long term? they're basically told, "why are you making up your illness?" so, i think it's... even worse than being sick is being told you're not sick. there will be a tendency to not believe the patient and tell them it's in their heads. as the climate changes and more of us are at risk, we reveal the truth about lyme disease. they beckon pony that's right. come on. yeah. calum culbert is 18. he lives with his parents and younger brothers in this beautiful part of the aberdeenshire countryside. he's grown up loving the outdoors and two years ago, he went on a hill walk that would change his life.

like any country boy, he was well used to insect and tick bites. he never imagined being bitten by something so small could be so dangerous. i've sort of got ticks all throughout my life. i've always been very outdoorsy, i've always been camping, always going up hills. calum's mum, fiona, had always been very aware of ticks. he'd gone off on his duke of edinburgh award and he came back, and we always did tick checks. he knew he'd been bitten, um, but when we did the tick check... like i took, like, 18, 19, 20 ticks off of him! so... but there was no marking, he didn't exhibit too many ill, you know, conditions or anything. he was... he seemed ok in himself for a few weeks. and then he started getting ill. i was in bed all the time, i couldn't get up, i couldn't move. um, i just constantly... i was losing weight ridiculously quick. um... i just... i just couldn't carry on with normal life.

three months after he fell ill, calum was tested for lyme disease. so it came back positive. it was actually on another duke of edinburgh award. i actually met him and said, "you've got lyme disease". i couldn't do anything. my life just came to a standstill, basically. calum's lyme disease took a while to diagnose — that's not unusual. around 200 people a year in scotland are recorded with the disease. the true number is thought to be much higher. i was one of the lucky ones. i love the outdoors. i'm always outside with the dog, or i'm outdoors with the children. but about 12 years ago, i tested positive for lyme disease. i noticed a bull's—eye—type rash on the back of my calf, i went to my gp, and my gp said he wouldn't take any chances. he gave me antibiotics. a few weeks later, that test came

back again negative. the treatment i received from my gp was quick and successful. but i've been reading about a rise in lyme cases in the uk, and instances where sufferers say they've struggled to get help. lyme was only recorded for the first time in the 1970s, by doctors in the usa. it's on the rise here and the highlands have been identified as a hot spot for infections. this is lochaber, one of those hot spots. a good place, then, to speak to a gp who regularly sees patients with the disease. lyme disease is an illness caused by a bacteria called, uh... it's a borrelia bacteria that's transmitted by ticks. that bacteria can be transmitted to the human and cause a whole variety of different diseases. so around about the focus of the tick bite, over about a week after the original tick bite,

a rash develops and spreads and keeps on spreading. and that's the first and most obvious sign that somebody has picked up an infected tick. and if the bacteria goes deeper into the body, it can cause really quite significant illness. it can affect, primarily, the nervous system. um, so it can start causing a paralysis. uh, it can affect the joints. and when it gets to this stage, again, antibiotics certainly can get rid of the bacteria, but in a percentage of people, they're left with some really quite debilitating symptoms for quite some considerable time. it's hard to believe that a tiny tick can cause such serious health problems. and it turns out there are far more of them around us than we might think. here on loch lomond's eastern banks, i met dr lucy gilbert. she brought a blanket along,

but we weren't going for a picnic. so, i'm going to take this little square of blanket material, and i'm going to walk through the vegetation for ten metres, slowly. and at the end of that, i'll turn the blanket over, and see whether any ticks have attached. so, yeah, we've got a few ticks on this. and it's probably about 13 degrees celsius today. probably about 90% of the tick population are actually active today. so scottish ticks are quite hardcore, and even when it's 6 degrees, about 20% of them are active. whereas if you go to central france, if it's six degrees, none of them are active,

cos they're used to the heat. lucy's interested in how climate change can affect tick numbers. she and her team are also looking into how [and management and deer numbers in scotland can influence how many ticks we find around us. there's one. so this... gosh, it's so hard to see! yes! they're tiny. they're only about one—and—a—half millimetres long. but these guys are so... look, that was so difficult to actually spot, unless you knew what you were looking for. they really are. and they can get through holes in socks, and they can hide in little crevices, in your tummy button. you've got these three little ones... yeah. and these were hatched about a year ago, and we call these nymphs. this is an adult female. it's the biggest type, and it's got a very red abdomen. mm. and this is the adult male,

who's a bit smaller than the female, and he's black rather than red. so which ones could be infected out of these? well, these could all be infected, but the ones that are most responsible for lyme disease cases in humans are these nymphs. and they might be infected. so, in scotland, the average infection rate of these is maybe... maybe 3% or li% of these might be infected. but, obviously, that will vary enormously depending on where you are. so, a lot of places, none of them will be infected. 0k. and there's the occasional place in scotland where maybe 20% might be infected. lucy told me about her own brush with lyme disease. her expertise in ticks and the health threat they pose held little sway with her gp. i noticed a little... a classic bull's—eye rash — only a little one. so i went to the doctor, and she said, "no! "you haven't got lyme disease. "there's none of that around here, you know." and i said, "oh, well, actually, i do work on lyme disease and ticks,

"and this is one of my study sites, and i do know it is around here". and she went, "no, no, no, i'm not going to treat you". and i got sort of flu—like symptoms, and joint aches, and strange sensations on my skin. and, eventually, iwent back to the doctors, and there was a nice, young locum doctor, and he said, "oh, well, i'd better refer you to the hospital!" and they gave me a month of intravenous antibiotics, and luckily, that did clear it up, very well. so, i'm fine now. it must have been difficult being told you didn't have it, when, actually, you knew about it. it was really frustrating, because i knew i had it. i'd found a tick on me, i knew it was the right type of tick. it had been on for at least21i hours. it was from an area where i knew other people had got lyme disease previously. i'd got the bull's—eye rash, which is supposed to be diagnostic. so, it was frustrating, yes. getting a diagnosis of lyme disease can be a complicated business. morven—may maccallum fell ill suddenly when she was iii. she says it changed her life.

i was hugely into mountain biking, horse riding... i'd go up munros at the weekend. i was in training for climbing up the mountain, morven, up in caithness. and, you know, iwasjust... i was one of these really annoying people who never, ever stopped! i just kept going. i wasjust... i just bounced everywhere. all that changed when what started off feeling like the flu became more serious. i'd fall asleep in the school bus, and i would come home and i'd just collapse in a heap on the couch, and... ..i literally got up, went to school and collapsed in utter exhaustion each day. and it got to the point where i had to leave school at 16, because by the time i got home from school each day, i was so weak, i couldn't physically walk. her doctors believed she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. then a neighbour — who had lyme disease — intervened. they'd seen me struggling to walk, and they said to my mother,

"have you considered lyme disease?" and she really...researched this, and she presented that research to the doctors and to the specialists that i saw, and they refused again to accept that it could be lyme disease, because all my blood tests kept coming back as being negative. so how was it confirmed as lyme disease? well, i went to a private clinic down south, where there's a lyme disease specialist, and she clinically diagnosed me with lyme disease. and then she ordered blood tests, which went to america and to germany, and they came back positive with lyme disease. and from that i started my... my treatment, which has been ongoing for about nine years now. how could tests for the same infection produce such variable results? raigmore hospital in inverness is the home of scotland's specialist testing centre for tick—borne diseases. they collate lyme tests and data from across the country.

its head is dr roger evans. lyme disease testing is complex. the disease presents in different ways. so, if you present acutely with a rash and we do our normal tests, and if that's positive with the clinical indications of a rash or a flu—like illness after a tick bite, we would think it's lyme disease and they would be treated. the difficulty there, of course, is, in an acute infection, the antibody response might not respond very quickly, and so the test that we use may be negative, even though the person has the disease. and so what we get is a false negative result. and that false negative result can have serious consequences. i think, for certainly a person that's been bitten by a tick, with...within a week or two, they may have very vague symptoms or a flu—like illness. and they're not feeling terribly unwell, but they don't have the classic rash, so it's not obviously identifiable by the gp.

if they present and we test, and it's negative, the person might think, "well, i don't have lyme disease." whereas, in fact, they may do have that. and what can happen then is, they then go on and develop the late lyme disease or other symptoms further on, and then it's more difficult to diagnose possibly, and then get treatment for it. janey cringean experienced a long delay in getting a lyme diagnosis. she's been living with the effects of the disease since being bitten by a tick while walking in west lothian, 15 years ago. i was in bed virtually all the time. i had headaches that felt like someone had stuck a kitchen knife in the side of my head. i couldn't move for about six hours each night, because itjust was so painful with the headaches. so what does it feel like mentally? torture.

janey had never heard of lyme disease, and it would be three years before a specialist diagnosed her as having it. but that wasn't the end of her problems. i was put on antibiotics that ended up being long—term, high—dose antibiotics, and i was treated for over three years by the nhs for my lyme disease. um, the treatment only really began to be effective at five weeks in. i had a day when i had the most severe headaches, and just was in bed all day feeling awful, and then woke up the next day — itjust felt like that someone had switched a light bulb on in my head. you know, it was a really dramatic, sudden improvement. and then about ten months in, i had an attempt at coming off the antibiotics, and it took five days before i crashed completely.

janey‘s experiences mirror those of a number of lyme disease sufferers, who say it's become a long—term illness, which only responds to long—term antibiotic treatment. janey pays for all these medicines privately. they're prescribed by a doctor who lives and works here, in dublin. drjack lambert believes the effects of lyme disease can last far longer than current medical advice suggests. i see patients who are previously 100% well, high—functioning, and two years later they're... ..nobody can figure out what's going on with them, and they're basically told... it's put back on them. you know, "are you depressed?" you know? "why are you making up your illness? " so i think it's... even worse than being sick is being told you're not sick.

do you think lyme disease is a chronic, long—term illness? i think it is, absolutely. um, and that's the debate in the medical community. most medical textbooksjust describe lyme disease as, you get a tick bite, you get an acute infection, and there, that's the end of it. but i think it actually goes on to cause chronic, persistent infection. and it's well documented in medical literature — people ignore the fact that lyme can persist for years and years if it's untreated, and then even if you treat it with short—course antibiotics, um, it can... you have persistent symptoms, that is enough proof to me that, yes, it can cause chronic, persistent infection. it is reversible with antibiotics. this is a minority view among those treating lyme. most doctors say that definitive evidence of chronic or long—term lyme disease hasn't been established. well, i think there are lots of uncertainties, lots of scientific uncertainties in ourunderstanding about the disease and how different people's immune systems respond to a bacteria.

but also, the way that people's body responds to that infection is all about the immune response and how a body tries to fight off that infection. i think what's happening is that the bacteria is no longer there, but i think their immune system is still very active and that's where they're getting these symptoms from, because of the activity of the immune system — kind of almost the body kind of fighting itself. now research is under way at raigmore to try to resolve this debate. the ideal would be to, for us, for example, is to devise a test that could detect active lyme disease. if we could devise that test, we'd be made for life, because that would be a test, if it was a one—off test, where we could try and identify that patient — "you have lyme disease, you need to be treated". "you do not have lyme disease, "you need to consider another diagnosis." and both aspects are very important,

because, for those who have lyme disease, they need to be identified, and they need to be treated appropriately. for those who don't have lyme disease, another diagnosis needs to be sought, because they need to be helped. they're very unwell and they need to find out what's causing their disease. until then, a patient‘s best bet is finding a gp who knows about lyme disease. they work to uk—wide guidelines set out by nice — the national institute for clinical excellence. these tell gps that the standard treatment is a... ..if the first is unsuccessful. if that doesn't work... ..and telling them the... ..even after treatment. the people i've spoken to believe gps need more support in tackling lyme disease. if someone's coming along

to a doctor saying, "i've got all these symptoms and they can't find anything wrong "because they don't have the tests to cover it," then... you know, i can completely understand that it's difficult, and—and. .. ..there will be a tendency to not believe the patient and tell them it's in their heads. but what we need to make doctors aware of is that this is a real illness, and it's really, really serious, and patients need an enormous amount of support. calum culbert‘s mum believes doctors ought to be better at picking up clues which could lead to a lyme diagnosis. i would have thought one of the first conversations should have been along the lines of, "you're very outdoorsy, "you have a history of being bitten by ticks, let's give you a test". i cannot reiterate how lucky calum is to get an nhs positive test, compared to people we know who have just been left for years.

i went to meet scotland's chief medical officer. i wanted to know if the government is doing enough to combat this disease. we've got some really good resources, resources that are on the website, nhs inform, at the moment for patients and professionals. but we've developed some really good new guidelines for professionals specifically. so, i, as chief medical officer, am writing to all of the doctors in scotland, in particular to the gps, to highlight that these educational resources are available. they can... they can look at those themselves, but they can also point out to patients, if there are symptoms or issues to look out for, when they're being consulted. getting better awareness among doctors and the public is clearly going to be vital in tackling lyme disease. it's notjust those of us who love the countryside

who need to take care. it's absolutely stunning here. it's like wild parkland, but it's in the middle of a city. you've got arthur's seat over there and holyrood park — same deal. you will have deer all around here that are carrying ticks. foxes, rabbits, birds... even the dogs that we walk up here. even we carry ticks. and i think it's important to understand about lyme disease in scotland is that, yes, there are hot spots like uist and perthshire, but it's notjust a rural problem. we've come across cases of lyme disease that are in cities. and if you live in a city, it's no guarantee that you won't be bitten by a tick. and if you're bitten by a tick, there is a chance that you'll get lyme disease. it's a problem we all need to be aware of. the scottish government is committed to raising awareness and more research. there's so much more we don't know, including exactly why cases have risen so much over

the past 20 years. professor dominic mellor heads up scotland's response to lyme and other tick—borne diseases. i started working for health protection scotland in 2006, and even then we knew that lyme disease was a problem. but between then and 2010, the numbers of cases that were being diagnosed took a big...a fairly big jump. it's difficult to know for sure whether that's all because there were that many more cases, or whether part of that was just because people were becoming more aware. our changing climate is one major area for future research. climate change is an obvious thing, but i think it's very difficult to predict quite what's going to happen. probably in some areas, they'll be more common, in other areas, they'll be less common. but the climate change effects don't just affect the ticks, they also affect the hosts, they affect the habitat, and they affect the behaviour of the people. and when you try and put all that together and work out... tricky!

certainly, my first two or three decades in practice here, i very rarely saw lyme disease, but certainly over the past five years, we've seen an increasing problem, and that's reflected notjust here in fort william, but certainly in the wider lochaber area and many other parts of highland. in conversation with our gp colleagues and other colleagues within the hospital, they're seeing more patients, and their own observations are that there's a lot of ticks around just now, and it's beginning to warm up in more ways than one. whether you live in the city or the country, there are practical steps we can all take to reduce our risk. if we start with this one here, this is the twister—type device. it looks a little bit like a claw hammer and it's got a bevelled edge. and the idea is if i had a tick on the back of my hand there... mm—hm. ..i would kind of go along and underneath the tick, and twist and lift off. the idea of that is that you're not actually squeezing the tick. um, this is the alternative method. this is the so—called card—type device.

mm—hm. it is being produced by the nhs in scotland. as you see, it's got a little magnifying glass on it there, so if it's one of the tiny questing nymph ticks, you can see it more clearly by looking through the magnifying glass. mm—hm. and then, if it's the very small ticks, you would kind of use the little bevelled edge there to kind of go underneath and then you would just lift off, and it flicks out. mm—hm. so, it's similar to that, isn't it? yes, and that's the sort of slightly larger size. and on the back is how to remove... how to remove the tick. 0k. it would be so tempting to use tweezers, though, wouldn't it? yes. the trouble with tweezers is, everybody then uses eyebrow tweezers or domestic tweezers. there are some people who say that if you use fine—pointed tweezers, they're ok, but i think thatjust creates confusion in the public... mm—hm. ..and i think the plastic removal devices are much better. so i'm guessing you'd like to see more of these in more places? exactly, everywhere. yeah. yes. it's impossible not to be moved by the suffering i've heard about. lyme disease changes lives. it's still a slow battle, getting back to what i originally felt

like before i got seriously ill. um, i still get ill quite a bit. i still struggle with getting my health back in shape. and, uh, it has been a long battle. in reality, even nine years on from having started treatment, my life is still completely dominated by this disease. there's not a single second in which... ..i feel like it's not in control of me, and that it's not monopolising my body. the whole worlds in its infancy dealing with lyme disease. there's so much complexity about it and so much that the scientists don't know. i feel passionate that this is something which needs to change, and i'll keep pushing for it as much as i can. as patients struggle on, sometimes for years, it's clear much more needs to be done to get under the skin of lyme disease.

good afternoon. as the heat and humidity rise through the weekend, that means a lot of fine and dry weather for us. but we could well see heavy showers and thunderstorms from sunday evening onwards. back to the here and now, a pretty decent —looking afternoon out there. long spells of sunshine, 20 to 23 celsius for england and wales, 18 or 19 for

scotla nd for england and wales, 18 or 19 for scotland and northern ireland. this evening, most of us staying dry. some cloud moving on from the south—west, through to night, it will push some rain across the far south—west of england. the breeze picking appear, too, a few showers are for northern ireland first thing tomorrow morning. tomorrow morning, the rain and strengthening south—easterly winds putting across south—west england, wales, and parts of northern ireland, too. for the rest of the uk, a largely dry day, temperatures as high as 2a celsius. starting to turn quite humid. those temperatures rise further as we have through next week, but there could be some heavy and thundery showers to accompany those higher temperatures.

this is bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at two: it's emerged that police were called to the home of tory leadership candidate borisjohnson and his partner on thursday night after a neighbour said she heard a loud argument. mrjohnson and jeremy hunt will take part in the first nationwide hustings this afternoon. we will bring you that live in an hour's time. as us and iran's relationship worsens a british foreign office minister will meet senior officials in iran tomorrow, to call for an ‘urgent de escalation‘ of tensions. campaigners have joined richard ratcliffe outside the iranian embassy to show solidarity with him as his hunger strike over his detained wife's plight enters its eighth day.