Jeremy Webb died of a meat allergy triggered by a tick bite. How do you avoid ticks and safely remove them?

Australian teenager Jeremy Webb is the first person in the world known to have died from a tick-induced meat allergy Photograph: Supplied

Myfanwy Webb remembers her son Jeremy was “always getting ticks” because he spent a lot of time in the bush, camping and mountain bike riding, around the property where he grew up on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

When Jeremy began to get really bad reactions to eating meat, or even when the scent wafted through the house if she was cooking a pork roast, Webb remembered reading an article about an immunologist who identified the connection between tick bites and developing mammalian meat allergy.