Nits (head lice) how common in UK schools

I'm wondering why it's more common here too, especially since Germany has a larger population but fewer cases of lice.  It could be because the population is condensed into a smaller area here so it's easier to pass to other people. 

Also, it sounds like the schools in the UK aren't as strict as either the US or Germany.  If parents can't send their kids to school unless they're lice-free then a lot of parents have no choice but to clear it up asap so they can go back to work instead of staying at home with their kids during the day, which in turn means fewer infected kids to pass it on.  Which leads me to wonder why the countries have such different policies...

I completely empathise with you. When I was 7, a girl in my class had headlice. The school wasn't notified until after she had infected myself and 2 other girls. I had long blonde hair that went all the way past my waist. I was kept out of school for 3 weeks, and my hair had to be cut off so short that I was mistaken for a boy, and it has been determined that the psychological shock caused my hair to go from blonde to dark brown overnight. It was a traumatizing experience that no child should ever have to go through.

It makes me wonder why lice is so much more common here than in the US, or does it just seem that way?

Yeap, I had my hair chopped off too at age 7.   I was out of school for a week or so I think and my mom had to go and do all kinds of cleaning and we were all a bit shamed for it.  Terrible, as there wasn't anything we could do

That's terrible!  My mother never chopped my hair off, for which I'm grateful - it refused to grow past my shoulders until I was 13 or so anyways. ><

My mom didn't want to cut my hair, but after 2 weeks of sitting there for hours and trying to get all those nits out with that little tiny comb she didn't feel like she had a choice. She tells me that I would just sit there and beg her not to comb my hair before she would start, she said that I didn't try to run away once she started combing but I just sat there with tears going down my face.

I don't remember any of this...funny I don't remember much until I was about 9 or 10. My old shrink once told me that I've probably blocked it out and lost alot of my childhood that way.

It is just more common here - Wikipedia also mentions Israel, Denmark and France, so I'm having a hard time thinking of any possible connection

It makes me wonder why lice is so much more common here than in the US, or does it just seem that way?

It isn't "much more common" in the UK.

In the UK around 3 million people of all ages are believed to get infested each year. That's around 5% of the population.

Reliable data on how many people in the United States get head lice each year are not available, an estimated 6 million to 12 million infestations occur each year in the United States among children 3 to 11 years of age.

That is between 2% and 4% of the US population. That's just children 3 to 11.

So, if you take the highest possible rate in the US, and add a bit for the adults, the rate is about the same.

I'm wondering why it's more common here too, especially since Germany has a larger population but fewer cases of lice.

The Germans are very strong on hygiene & so on, I am inclined to observe...

Ahhh what a delightful post. LOL

I'm an American and I can tell you that my kids got lice several times ,usually as soon as school started, next thing ya know...they had lice.

WE moved alot (within the states) my kids had lice in California, Colorado and Arkansas.

My kids had lice and chicken pox at the SAME time! (In California)

Once, I had just taken a greyhound bus from Arkansas to California to visit my mom. A couple days later we're at Disneyland, my kids are 4 years, 2 years and 6 months old .The two older boys are scratching their heads like crazy.....Oh imagine the joy to be at frekin' Disneyland (after spending a fortune to get in) when you discover that your kids have lice.

I bought them a tight fitting hat and carried on.

When lice arrived....we took EVERTHING washable, including rugs to the laundry mat. I once had 17 loads of laundry; we sprayed the house and even spent the night in a hotel, after treating everyone in the houses head with lice treatment.

Simply combing ones hair with the little comb will NOT get rid of a lice infestation.

My kids were all boys. I would (after the lice medicine) lay them on the kitchen table and sit there with the tiny comb and tweezers and try to remove every NIT! (Egg)
Well, all it takes is for ONE lousy nit to hatch to start the whole thing over again.

Perhaps that is why it is more prevalent in certain places.Sometimes you just can't cut corners.

My mother would keep a cup of hot-to-boiling water on-hand when combing us out to rinse the tiny combs in; she generally managed to fight the infestations off right proper.  Of course, all the washing and the spraying, and heh... there were FOUR of us, three of us girls... I'm amazed she didn't sell us down the river!

thanks Moms and everyone!

Sorry I am all thumbs and learning as I go, I mean I am great to play wii with but totally new to when it comes to runny noses and sticky fingers. That comb is definitely worth looking into

scratch scratch scratch

I have never had lice and I don't recall my sisters ever having them. I remember it being a shameful thing back then in the bowels of Mississippi. Ticks and jiggers were my aliments.
scratch scratch scratch

My eldest had it back around 1991 ish (P2). The school nurse called us and we got a chemical treatment. For everyone of us. He had it again a few years later and we couldn't (didn't?) get a chemical treatment and just combed them out over a period of time. Also washed all the sheets and anything our heads would go in or on. And just kept a lookout for them. That was the last time. DD never got them.

The current wee boy has been through mothers&toddlers, playgroup, nursery. P1 & P2. And so far has never got them. Fingers crossed.

So I would not consider 5 - 10 times a year normally. I think, as others, that though they may be ridding them from the head, they haven't eliminated them from the house. And I would also check with the school.

The schools here (Scotland) had the school nurse who used to check and would call the families and advise us. I am not sure if they still do this, are still allowed to do this, or  just don't have the money. Then again, maybe there just hasn't been a problem thus far. But either way getting nits here doesn't have the same social stigma it once had. IMO.

And Colleen I wouldn't worry too much about inexperience. There ain't too many of us that got a degree in child rearing before the first one made an appearance nor did any of us get a manual on the care and nurturing of rugrats (well at least they never gave me one. Was that an optional add on?) But internet thingy is ACE for help.

Back to scratching. I'm off for a shower and to wash my hair.

As is often repeated, hygiene doesn't have much to do with getting nits.  Once it is in the school, it is anyone's game.

Nits can't live in dry conditions, so places like Utah in the US have a very low rate.  They need damp weather to keep thier little shells are moist or they die.

Guess where is damp?   Oh geography, how you mock me.   

When my 2 kids were at infants and junior school, in the 1980s, every so often they would bring home a letter saying that "some children" in the school had been found to have headlice and as a precaution (to contain the outbreak) parents were urged to treat their kids. You could go to your local GP practice and get free lotion or shampoo and a comb. There were a number of different ingredients, mainly malathion or phenothrin and and they were rotated around the country to try to stop the lice getting resistant. Some of our more hippy friends swore by Tea Tree Oil.

Dimeticone has recently been found to clear head lice. It is a silicone based product used in many cosmetics and is not classed as an insecticide chemical like the previous two. Current advice seems to be: only use a treatment on people who actually have lice, and that contrary to popular belief, head lice do not spread quickly through schools. Alarming 'head lice letters' from schools are usually unhelpful.

I often heard repeated the mantra that "lice prefer clean hair". I think that lice don't really care one way or the other, but it was probably helpful getting parents to deal with a problem rather than go into denial.

In former centuries, more or less everybody had parasites. St Thomas A Becket was so holy that he wore a hair shirt infested with lice under his vestments. After he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by the King's men, a monk knelt by his cooling body and counted the number of lice that left it, and the total was considered a holy number (I read somewhere).

i live in france, and my kids go to a nice private school.  low and behold there are lice everywhere in the school.  my kids got them for the first time ever, having been in schools in the US and in London (east, even)  the french aren't bothered, and the schools don't do anything about it. it seems to be a fact of life.  lavender oil does seem to repel them....  lice like clean heads, by the way...

scratch scratch scratch

I have never had lice and I don't recall my sisters ever having them. I remember it being a shameful thing back then in the bowels of Mississippi. Ticks and jiggers were my aliments.
scratch scratch scratch

It might've been shameful, but that didn't prevent me getting it FIVE TIMES in ONE YEAR because of one filthy pair of siblings on my bus in Lee County//Saltillo, MS. :p  Of course, it didn't help that I was the only one getting it; they only rode the bus in the mornings, and I ended up in their seat in the afternoon... but since I was all of 6, it's not like I thought about this.  So yeah, took most of the year to figure out -why- I kept getting it, and as that was also the year I had bronchitis, pneumonia, and the chicken pox (for the second time)...

*joins in the scratching*

lice like clean heads, by the way...

The NHS website states that they prefer clean hair, while Wikipedia says they're not fussed one way or the other. I was listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 about nits a few months ago where they said that "Nits prefer clean heads" was a myth created by health professionals in the 50s to comfort middle class parents whose children gots nits at school. They used to flourish very widely indeed until fairly modern times. I mean, people didn't shampoo with Alberto in the Middle Ages.