Headlice have been the bane of Sarah's life for the past year, writes Katherine MacAlister. Despite rigorously treating her children's hair on a regular basis, as soon as they return to school they get re-infected.

She has called for new measures to clamp down on the parents who are not taking the problem seriously enough.

Sarah, who does not want to use her real name, has to resort to her extensive 'bug-busting method', as she calls it, to rid her children of the insects. This involves washing their hair, adding conditioner and then combing it through until every single nit has been eradicated with a nit comb. This is undertaken every other day for two weeks. "It's horrible because the comb scrapes their scalp and hurts. The older children often get infected by their younger brothers and sisters and take the problem to their own school which they find highly embarrassing.

She does not use nit lotions because of a cancer scare about the chemicals involved and experts agree that the bug-busting method is the best way to detect the problem.

Sarah has cut her kids' hair short to try to reduce the problem, or at least make it easier to deal with.

So you can imagine her frustration when she finally rids her children of the parasitic insects only for them to get re-infected. This has now been recurring for a year. But she said the problem was widespread all over Oxfordshire: "It's an epidemic," she said, "and it makes my children feel lousy."

"It's really disgusting because the lice suck their blood and then spit out the grossness which makes my kids feel sick and pale," she explained.

She is demanding that headteachers address the problem by devising a universal plan to eradicate the problem.

"You have to teach the kids how to avoid being re-infected because otherwise it's a vicious circle," Sarah said. But Caro Fickling, Oxfordshire's primary care development nurse, said that extensive studies had proved that a school nurse constantly checking the problem was not just unproductive but also ineffective.

"The school nurse is limited in what she can do. Even if she treated all the pupils, they could go home and if the rest of the family have got it, get re-infected. It is not up to the school nurses or teachers to treat lice, which is a very timely process, it's up to the parents.

"The problem starts when they don't complete the lice treatment or don't carry it out properly." However, if one pupil persistently re-infected other pupils and obviously was not getting treated at home, Ms Fickling said a health visitor would be called in to deal with the problem.

A serious epidemic at a school would be addressed by the headteacher and school nurse working together but Ms Fickling denied the problem had reached these proportions.

"It's all about prevention, that's the main issue. Frequent combing, using conditioner and contact tracing are all vital," she said.

She recommended an insecticide treatment to combat lice and said studies had shown that no one brand worked better than any other.

Story date: Monday 06 December

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