Today I've received a letter form my kids school to notify the parents that there has been a case of "Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease" in the school. :scared:

„The symptoms are discrete grayish lesions which may progress to larger ulcers in mouth, on palms of hands and soles of feet. It is spread by direct contact with nose and throat discharges and feces of infected persons by sneezing. The symptoms usually appear between 3-5 days”

If you see any signs of the Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, (being a sudden onset of a rash, fever and sore throat), please contact your family doctor to advise of the exposure.

Few Months ago there was a lice problem :scared:

When I was at school in South Africa we had never these problems...........maybe it was the burning hot sun that killed all the lice & diseases

I regularly identify cases of scabies, lice, body lice, fleas, refer kids for tests for HF&M and HSV1 & more scarily HSV2....it shocked me too when I first got here how bad it can be in the schools. Poverty coupled with poor hygiene is usually the reason, sometimes rural kids get cross infections from farms too. Inexcusable as far as I am concerned, soap is cheap and the parents always seem to have enough money for fags and drugs.

Neither "foot hand and mouth" nor headlice are all that unusual.

Both my boys caught headlice in their "nice middle class english school" in Sussex, and I remember cases of foot, hand and mouth disease, though I have never seen that personally.

http://www.drgreene.com/21_1103.html
http://www.health.gov.sk.ca/rr_head_lice.html

Neither are particularly a result of poor hygeine, though the spread of the virus can be controlled by hand-washing as any other virus, and headlice should be regularly detected and removed to prevent spread.

Ewww! That's why I keep away from all small children.

That's an unfair poke at the poor. A friend, mother of two, had to have her head shaved after a lice problem originating in her children's expensive private school. As your post implies, cleanliness is not about money but pride, "Her clothes were old but never were they dirty" as some blind fella sang.

Not really a poke at the poor. I am barely out of that category myself these days. A poke at some people's priorities perhaps. I should have qualified the statement with "all the cases I see....." as in 99% of them, poor hygiene is an ongoing issue. I know what the health centres say about who gets head lice and how common they are etc. etc. The fact remains that in low income schools, the problem is always far worse. There are exceptions, as with your friend. I have had to treat my family countless times for head lice and once for scabies because of the job I do. My kids have never got anything from school in the UK, and have yet to get anything from school here. I am looking at the lice notice from my daycare - because yet again the same parent refused to treat her son properly with the shampoo because "it's expensive". The kid is always filthy - she wears designer bling.

OK, that was a little strong, I know you know whereof you speak.

Justified, however.

Not so worried about lice or hand foot and mouth, but I'll certainly be happier sending my kid to school over here knowing that the vast majority of his peers will have been immunized (if rather tricked into it) - I read MMR is down to 62% take-up rate in some middle class areas of Edinburgh :scared:

the head lice thing cheers me up no end , since my youngest started school he has seemed to be a magnet for head lice , i have spent a fortune on stuff to get rid of it , i always dreaded the letter " a case of head lice has been found " as i knew within a week or so he would be scrathching , even at 14 he managed to get them , so far touch wood we have avoided it for 18 months

we are certainly not poor and our hygiene is impecable , but i know where you are coming from. The kid that had them , you could see them crawling in his hair and the mother would not do anything about them , she said nature would deal with it , i am afraid my £8 a bottle was the only way to deal with it £16 it cost every time he got it. :scared:

i am glad he is nearly 16 , not much longer my eldest never had them , as for foot and mouth , never seen it but we have had imbetigo going round. we are semi rural.

look forward to the new diseases in Canada !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :scared:

I've read (can't remember where) that clean hair is more likely to be attactive to head lice and allow them to take hold than dirty hair.

Makes sense to me cos I was a grubby little kid - my mom had to wrestle/threaten/coerce me into a bath - and I never caught anything except chicken pox and cooties from boys.

When my daughter was in junior school a couple of years ago head lice was rife there (and probably still is). I was always battling to get rid of the darn little pests, then they would return with avengance One day she gave it to me, so I went to the Head Teachers office and complained (while scratching my head). You should've seen him back away from me He knew exactly which child had the lice (the Mother never bothered to treat her), so I said she should be excluded from school until she is clean. "Oh no" he said "I can't speak to her parents about it" and went all PC on me. He said all he could do was send out a letter to all the parents of children in my DD's year. Stupid to&&er. I was so glad when my DD was out of there.

When I was a kid, if any of us had headlice we were banned from school until it was treated and zapped!

Hand foot and mouth is very common in children - mine caught it in nursery. It was not nice - they both had ulcers in their mouths and the only thing that controlled their discomfort was regular doses of nurofen and calpol. I wouldn't wish it ony anybody so I hope your kids manage to avoid it! With the best will in the world (and levels of hygiene) it is virtually impossible to avoid these things in young children. Lice on the other hand we have managed to avoid, so far....

i know exactly what you mean , i was told it is against the childs civil rights to single them out , the kid was crawling with head lice , i was spending £16 a week to get rid of , the parents were not to be approached by the school either so one of the mums invited a bunch of kids to her house including the one one with lice and had a hair washing party , when the mother picked him up she was told what had been done and her exact words were , thank god i didn't have to pay for it , i know where to come in future. !! words failed me ( and that is rare )

we had nitty noras come to the school when i was a kid and we all had a hair check and those with nits had it dealt with at school ,

as mentioned , they only like clean hair , if you rinse your hair once a week with vinegar and water they do not like that either.

I think anyone around 30 (ish, ahem....) should remember the 'Nit Nurse'. These days it seems that anyone pointed out as having head lice is being persecuted! Teachers these days are told they're not allowed to tell the parents of the kids with nits that they have a problem - PC madness. This compounds the problem as most parents will realise if they're kids have nits and get them treated immediately. It's only the 'problem' parents that don't get them treated in time that end up causing the outbreak and they're the ones that obviously have to be told before they realise there's a problem.

The headmaster of my school has admitted that it's always the same small group of children that start the outbreak. Anyone can get head lice, it only really seems to cause a problem when it's left too long before being treated. As for cleanlyness, I'm sure that nits do prefer clean hair, however, if the hair is rarely washed, the lice eggs are not going to be spotted. I'll never standing next to a middle aged woman in a motorway service station late one night. The smell caught my attention first of all and as I backed away from her I caught sight of her matted hair which appeared to be 'animated'. It was full of full sized 'crawlers' and from that day I have always checked my kids hair regularly.

On that thught, I have to go away and scratch!!!