Head Lice ... Obvious really...

[EddyBayton]

All my children have grown up now although I am the carer of my 22 year old daughter who has CP so some issues such as the heading can still apply in close quarters. I have written to the Telegraph with this submission but I doubt it will be printed. Regardless I think it is important so I have joined your group to post a copy anyway. Don't scratch too much. It's a positive...

Quote:

One creature that is suffering more than Homo sapiens in these Covid19 times may be Pediculus humanis capitis, the head louse. Distancing has compromised its main method of reproduction. The life cycle from birth to death of a female louse is around 30 days. With 50 or more days of distancing, now may be the first opportunity in generations to ask every parent to make a thorough check of all their children and themselves whereby a difference can be made. If any infestation is discovered it does not take expensive or proprietry products from the chemist to deal with this issue. Several (locked in) days with a thick hair gel applied will suffocate the adults and nymphs. A second treatment will deal with later hatched eggs. Soap and hot bath water and a fine comb will sort any residual issues. It would be an interesting exercise in Public Health to see one small positive out of this ghastly event.
Eddy Bayton

I'm not sure what sort of response you want?

I don't. I just thought I'd put it out there. It's never been a subject people want to discuss much. We had two episodes about 20 years ago which weren't much fun.

I agree actually! We are (hopefully) beyond the nits stage in this house but the science is surely that this is an opportunity to massively decrease headline prevalence? It would be a great thing to do in preparation for schools reopening, whenever that is...

I've been thinking the same! Good opportunity to get ahead!

I also wondered about things like chicken pox.

we should really be seeing a decline in all kinds of infections, in fact if we're not it suggests social distancing isn't being followed
but within a family there will be constant re-infection between members - this is the issue with headlice sometimes that one family member doesn't get treated and then passes them on again
but I suspect that is people can't be arsed to treat the whole family for headlice in normal times, they will be even less likely to do so at the moment
and I have every sympathy for not wanting to do it it's a real PITA

Fair comments...but I've never known a family not treat everyone if one person was found with them in the family. Agree. For a few weeks it is a real pita.

You have never across a family who doesn't treat everyone? I am surprised by this. Most schools will have at least one family who are constantly reinfesting everyone else. This is a major problem in many areas.

My last experiences were perhaps 20 years ago. Times and attitudes may have changed, as has the investment in public healthcare I suspect. I remember school nurses with half termly class nit checks, school newsletters with nit alerts, notice boards with alerts, slips in reading bags for friend of infested child but no names, advice about treatments, washing, combing, checking, changing bedding, freezing coats ... even several examples of the nurse treating children herself. Perhaps in these academy days, school nurses are not on the bean counters and human resources radar...

Times have changed indeed!

No nit nurse, no checks. No targeted warnings.

Current practice is a regular slip to the whole school or at least the whole class reminding about checking.

No one looks, though of course you may notice.
No one is sent home to be treated.

That is frankly shocking. If you don't have a school nurse you don't have a handle on some of the absolute basics of public health. Applies in a secondary environment as much as a primary. We seem to be losing so much common sense.

@EddyBayton

Have you just arrived in a time machine from 1993?

No. My recent experience is of a decade of relentless cuts in support for disabled teenagers and young adults. My other children were dealt a better hand in life. I'm getting pretty sick of the way we are governed. We are however going off topic. As an aside I would be happy to live in 1965 or 1970. Much more gentle times.

there are still school nurses but I think they mostly work in safeguarding
my mum was a school nurse, she retired at least 25 years ago, and they had abandoned using nurses to check for lice well before she retired, it's just not possible to do it thoroughly enough in a reasonable time, also, it was considered to be a routine parental/hygiene task rather than a public health matter. One thing school nurses do have to do (for their sins) is weigh and measure children and then inform parents that their children have raised BMI. To see what people think about that public health intervention, see any one of the 1000s of threads here about children who have heavy bones/muscle.
Eddy, perhaps you are remembering your own childhood?
I completely agree about services for people with disabilities, but if you talk to adults of our kind of age who have disabilities, they may not remember the 60s and 70s so fondly

Ha ha 'Stillwerise' no I am definitely not. I may be over 60 but having given up my job to raise 3 under 5 to adults, two well adjusted and one with significant physical disability but lovingly cared for AND retained our marriage in the process which is rare, I am not confusing my school years with those of my children. My childhood included things a lot of you youngsters would never believe and the NHS provided free of charge and not requiring a parental permission slip. These days the local Rotary Club circulates an age appropriate Drug Awareness Education Trailer which spends a week at 40 odd local schools each year. Excellent. Drugs weren't an issue when I grew up. Smoking was universal and all kids walked through a fog of smoke in their own house daily. Smoking indoors is almost inconceivable these days. Not only did our school have a nurse, every year two dreaded vans turned up. One was the X-Ray van to take a chest pic for TB and while they were at it dish out some injections. Didn't stop me having measles and mumps and rubella. I was born just before those jabs. Did avoid polio though. 3 drops of vaccine on a sugarlump. Not all my cohort did. The other van was the NHS County dentist. If you didn't have a dentist you had to queue up for a check twice a year. Bad teeth were pulled and fillings dealt with. Luckily I went to a dentist every 3 months. Free of charge. As for memories of disabled children in the 60s and 70s you are correct. Out of sight out of mind. It was a cruel time to be a minority in big public places but not so in a village. If a kid had leg irons it didn't make them less included. Everyone knew the situation. Nobody made a big deal of it.

We are a long way from headlice. Sorry

I agree: all school children should be de-loused and wormed, and we wipe out nits and threadworms for a generation.

Well done Avocadoze. We are on the same page. Didn't want to introduce the threadworm debate as that is an even bigger can of worms... sorry

@StillWeRise it has been said that if everyone could manage to get tested for STD's and treat before sleeping with anyone new this lockdown time could have a massive impact on STD infection rates and almost eradicate them.

I don't suppose bojo will take this opportunity though.......

Not really Johnson's style is it looking at his extended family...

less of the 'youngsters' Eddy
I was raised on marmite and rose hip syrup from the clinic

Did you get paid to collect rose hips? Did you also take shillings in for National Savings Stamps to pay off the war debt? We used to buy these stamps every week but I never saw them cashed. I found a shoebox full of filled books from our schooldays when father died. I guess you were supposed to take them to the PO to cash later. 1/- a stamp was a lot. A week of school dinners (including seconds) cost 2/6.

This is interesting!

I'm a tad young for most of these memories, without feeling able to claim the word for myself! Knocking 51, here.
I didn't have nits as a child, though I parented through several outbreaks, one brought in persistently by the parent of a foster child I had. It helped once I worked out where it was coming from- one child to comb every contact instead of all of them three times a week.

no to picking rose hips, but yes to the stamps- they had a picture of Prince Charles and Princess Anne on them (as children- though they must have been teenagers surely)- and if you had enough you could use them to buy savings certificates, probably in denominations of £1- which I did- I think I cashed them in when I was 18.

I very much doubt that there is any parent who has a child who's got untreated headlice who will think "oh now they've printed a letter in the Telegraph that makes complete sense I will go and treat them properly."

If they've had it since the start of lockdown, it'll be pretty obvious by now.

During a particularly stubborn head lice infestation on dc3(at the time 6) I may or may not have shouted "they should make spot on for children" thankfully I managed to eradicate the fuckers during the Summer holidays, having battled for the previous half term (yes I treated all of us each time).