Invasion of the supernits that last up to SIX years

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Invasion of the supernits that last up to SIX years

 

By ANGUS WATSON - More by this author » Last updated at 08:28am on 11th December 2007 Comments (9)

For years, Beckie Dacosta viewed the end of the school day with a sense of trepidation.

Despite regular treatment, her daughter Jessica suffered almost constantly with head lice, and was being picked on at school because of it.

"She used to come home looking so sad," says Beckie. "The other children called her Nit Girl, and wouldn't play with her."

"As she came through the door she would shy away from me because she didn't want me dragging a comb through her hair again - it was awful," says Beckie, a 32-year-old care home manager from Bognor Regis.

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Nit-free: Beckie Dacosta with daughter Jessica, nine, who had head lice for six years

 

 

For six years, Jessica, now nine, was infested with lice.

"I wasn't worried to begin with because I'd got rid of her big brother's lice easily," says Beckie. "But Jessica's were different. Every evening, I'd spend 45 minutes going through her hair with a comb. I'd think they were gone, then she'd come back from school with her head crawling.

"We tried everything in the shops and anything anyone advised - tea tree oil, natural sprays, that kind of thing - and went to the doctor three times. In the end, he told us just to live with it. It was really upsetting."

Jessica became more and more unhappy. "She hated going to other people's houses because her friends' parents, my sister, and even my mother would check her for head lice before letting her in. And I became an obsessive nit hunter."

There is something of an epidemic of head lice in Britain, with ten per cent of children carrying them at any time.

And it is now emerging that more children are suffering from chronic lice infestations which last weeks, months and even years.

 

This is because head lice have developed a resistance to many products, says Ian Burgess, director of the Medical Entomology Centre, in Shepreth, near Cambridge.

 

He says the problem began in the Nineties: "There was a new range of insecticide lotions, which at first worked really well.

"But, as early as 1993, we found that lice were becoming resistant. In urban Britain today, most lice are unaffected by all the insecticides on the market."

Another problem is that even if your child is treated, other children at school may not be.

"Some parents at Jessica's school didn't check their kids, so every time we killed her lice, she'd pick a new lot up," says Beckie.

 

Indeed according to anti-head lice campaign Once a Week Take a Peek - whose backers include the School and Public Health Nurses Association - almost half of all parents don't understand the need to check for head lice at all, a third don't know what to look for anyway, and a quarter think you can leave it to the nit nurse.

 

But the nit nurse disappeared years ago. Head lice inspections were part of school life until the Seventies, when local medical officers - who authorised these inspections - were abolished.

 

In any case, says Ian Burgess, school inspections are not the answer.

"One nurse checking 500 heads is bound to miss cases. Parents checking at home are a much more effective means of finding lice."

The bad news, according to experts, is that we're entering peak head louse period. Children are playing indoors together for longer in the dark afternoons, and lice are marching happily from head to head.

It's also thought lice may move between coats and hats hung next to each other in cloakrooms.

 

In a way, head lice shouldn't be a huge problem. The lice themselves are tiny - the size of sesame seeds - they don't carry diseases, and aren't itchy, unless your child is allergic to their saliva or has a very heavy infestation.

But you'd probably prefer your child not to be an insect nursery, so here's how to find and eradicate them.

WHAT TO DO

 

• There are lice prevention treatments available but they are no guarantee that your child won't become infested, as Dr Nigel Hill, a medical entomologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, explains.

"I've seen no reliable scientific evidence that socalled head louse repellents offer any protection against kids catching lice at all." So, chances are, your child will get them at some point.

 

• Check your child's head every week. You need a stiff comb and sharp eyes or a magnifying glass. First wash and condition the hair - which loosens the grip of the lice, and makes them easier to spot - then part the wet hair and look for lice and eggs, particularly behind ears and at the roots of pony-tails.

 

Eggs look like tan, yellow or brown dots. The fully grown louse is about a millimetre long. You'll need to pluck them out. Repeat every three days for two weeks. • If that fails, you can try using a product, of which there are three main types.

Natural remedies such as tea tree and eucalyptus and there are recipes on the internet for home-made cures.

However, Dr Hill advises that the amount of pure tea tree oil you would need to use could cause scalp irritation.

 

"People think that because these remedies are natural, they're safer, but actually oils like tea tree can be more irritating to skin than overthecounter insecticides.

"But you shouldn't worry about using tea tree oil-based products - although they're more toxic than synthetic head lice poisons, they're still not toxic enough in low concentrations to harm you unless you're allergic."

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Britain is experiencing an epidemic of head lice, with ten per cent of children carrying them at any time

 

 

Alternatively, try an insecticide lotion, such as Full Marks, which is available over the counter at your chemist or by prescription, or for the really strong stuff, products such as Lindane or Malathion.

However, these may have side effects, and as Ian Burgess points out, lice are increasingly resistant to these sorts of treatments.

 

The latest weapon in the war on lice, the one that ousted Jessica Dacosta's insect occupiers, is a lotion called Hedrin. "It uses a chemical called Dimeticone which coats the lice like clingfilm, suffocating them," says Dr Hill.

 

Because it relies on a physical rather than chemical process to kill the lice (suffocating them), they can't become immune to it.

 

Its producer, Thornton & Ross, is calling it a "panacea" - the clean and effective solution. Sinclair Pharma intends to launch a similar product next year.

 

Dr Hill says no single remedy is 100 per cent effective, and says it's really a case of trial and error to see which works best for your family.

 

Beckie is relieved that her six-year battle against head lice is finally over.

"Jessica is Nit Girl no more, and I no longer have to spend my evenings combing through her hair.

 

"She's a much happier girl - always flicking her hair around. And I'm so glad I'm free from a life of incessant nit-picking," she adds.