The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued some head-scratching guidelines and recommendations over the past few years.
Their latest recommendation focuses on updating policies related to head lice among America’s students.
As students head back to school, many parents might not be aware of the latest lice policies issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The CDC has recently updated its guidelines on how schools and families should handle head lice infestations. One significant change is that students with head lice no longer need to be sent home early from school. Students are now allowed to finish the school day, receive a home lice treatment and return to class as soon as the following morning.When it comes to the “no-nit” policies of the past the health organization along with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of School Nurses advocate for discontinuing children to be completely free of nits before returning to school.
As any parent will tell you, dealing with head lice is challenging. My son never had an infestation, though he was sent home from pre-school several times because the teacher couldn’t distinguish a nit (i.e., louse egg) from a grain of sand. His young friend had several mayonnaise hair treatments, which were unpleasant.
According to medical professionals, the recommendations are sensible.
That approach makes sense, according to Dr. Dawn Nolt, a pediatrician at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon.“It takes about four to six weeks for someone to really show and start itching from head lice. And so, you know, once it’s detected, it’s probably really been there for about a month,” Nolt told NPR’s Morning Edition.Having lice in your hair just isn’t that urgent of a condition, she said.“It doesn’t carry any additional diseases. It’s just really a nuisance,” she added. “So we encourage that kids stay in school at least through the end of the day, and send a note or a call to the family to start treatment as soon as they can.”
The CDC says that the nit-specific focus on dealing with lice isn’t effective and is burdensome.
• Many nits are more than a quarter-inch from the scalp, making them unlikely to hatch or become crawling lice.• Nits bond to hair shafts and are unlikely to transfer to others.• The burden of missing school days due to nits far outweighs the minimal risk of transmission, especially when the lice have been treated.• When performed by non-medical professionals, misdiagnosis of nits is common.
Now, all of this may be true. But in this post-covid era, people are….skeptical.
Louse-transmitted diseases are presently not a serious threat in this country, yet. In other parts of the world, however, lice do transmit typhus fever (a disease which has killed and which there have been reported cases associated with homeless camps), epidemic relapsing fever, and trench fever.
For more on human lice, here is a fun video:
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