Our latest attempt to deal with lice: call in the experts

There’s respect in Dee Wright’s voice when she talk about Pediculus humanus capitis. “They are a brilliant opponent,” she says. She ticks off their stats: They mate once, then lay eggs for 30 days. They are tenacious and wily and immune to just about any chemical you put on them. Is it any wonder that head lice are the insect that keeps on giving?

Wright’s symbiotic relationship with the louse began almost 4 years ago, when she set up Hairforce, a lice-busting service that operates out of her home studio in North London. There, teams of women in white uniforms and magnifying goggles give no quarter to lice and their eggs, seeking them out with scientific precision using tight-tooth combs, tweezers and what I can only describe as contraptions.

First there is the vacuum cleaner with a comb attached (at least, that’s what it looks like) that sucks out the larger creatures. Then there is Wright’s newest louse-buster, the only one of its kind in the UK. This machine heats and dehydrates eggs so they don’t hatch. If you have ever used a diffuser on your blowdryer, you will recognise the business end of this machine. If you have ever held your diffuser in one part of your head a little too long, you understand how much heat it takes to dessicate a nit.

Paying someone to find your child’s hair nits might sound like something for people who can’t be bothered to raise a comb on their own.

Yet while Wright understands the louse, she’s in touch even more with the desperation infestations can inspire. “We hear from a lot of people who struggle for a long time,” she says. Some children come in after being excluded from playdates or ostracised on the playground. While we all know that lice don’t mean the person is “dirty”, what we feel when dealing with an infestation is a down-to-your-bones shiver of “Eww”.

That perhaps is what Hairforce really battles with its hoses and tweezers and cheerful matter-of-fact staff in this smart, paisley-wallpapered front room. Parents have called for help in the middle of the night, even on Christmas Day.

I visited with my 6-year-old after 3 months of infestation and re-infestation. I couldn’t bear another evening with the excellent (and effective) Nitty Gritty comb, a handful of hair grips and Shrek 2. We were both exhausted.

In the end, after an hour and a half, the crisp young women didn’t find anything on either of us. That’s common, Wright says. “People lose their confidence in dealing with them,” and are never sure if they’ve gotten them all. That’s where she and her team stand ready, with an arsenal of silly-looking contraptions, mini DVD players and an eye fixed on one of the most tenacious opponents of all.

Watch Wright’s team at work on Embarrassing Bodies

View the blog at: http://timesonline.typepad.com/alphamummy/2010/06/our-latest-attempt-to-deal-with-lice-call-in-the-experts.html

Featured in the Vogue Beauty blog this week.  A real honour given we are such Vogue devotees.  Plenty of fashionista’s with nits and head lice.  Lice no longer have to accessorise the latest Marc Jacobs or Top Shop outfit – we can ensure that.

Their blog entry on us:

Today a public service announcement:  The daughter of one of our Vogue Editiors (who wishes to remain anonymous) has been trying in vain for years to get rid of her nits.  Nothing works and evenings and weekends have become a battleground to get rid of the pesky little mites.  You can imagine her delight when she discovered The Hairforce – Lice Assassins.  Run from a divine Georgian house in Primrose Hill, the problem is dealt with in three to four treatments from a team of ghostbuster style experts and lasts long enough for parents to flick through an issue of Vogue at nearby Melrose and Morgan.  Problem solved!

www.thehairforce.co.uk 22 St Mark’s Crescent, Primrose Hill, London, NW1 7TU

Link to the Vogue Beauty blog:  http://vogue.co.uk/blogs/the-vogue-beauty-blog/articles/100517-the-nitty-gritty/aspx

We had fantastic coverage in the first of Embarrassing Bodies Kids Series, which examined nits and head lice:

Combing out thousands of nits (eggs) from Tiffany's hair

The first kid in the waiting room is eight year old Tiffany whose hair has been harbouring some little monsters for the last 4 years. 50% of 11 to 14 year olds get nits each year, they are particularly prevalent in school children as they are caught through hair to hair contact. Tiffany’s nits had damaged her self-confidence, and although her mum had tried all treatments available, the stubborn nits just won’t budge. Dr Christian sent Tiffany to see specialist nit removers, who have an array of tools to drive those pesky nits out. They begin by hoovering the hair to get rid of all the living lice, then the hair is sprayed with a special conditioner and combed using a very fine toothed comb to get rid of the eggs, the more stubborn eggs are finally picked out with tweezers. Tiffany had 4 sessions of nit removal, totally 5 hours! But her hair is now nit free.

The Embarrassing Bodies team would like to thank:

Hairforce Lice Assassins

Check out the video and watch us clear Tiffany:http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid81922772001?bctid=82886535001

Watch this Friday 30th April at 9.00 pm Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies which focuses on Kids and head lice.  The Hairforce – Lice Assassins is featured clearing and shutting down a major infestation that the products and many medical specialists had failed to tackle adequately.

Check out Embarrassing Bodies website at: http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/

Thank you Jemima for the stella tweet

TWITTER OF THE DAY

Jemima Khan on the trials of modern life

‘Off to a place called The Hairforce – Lice Assassins with my boys.  Scratching like the devil.  Praying psychosomatic.  The glamour….’

Check out the Evening Standard: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/

Franchising – A way ahead for women

by Linda Whitney

STARTING a business can be the answer to the problem women often face of balancing your work with your private life, and a franchise can be less risky than going it alone.

‘Because it’s already tried and tested, the franchise model provides a more secure platform for starting a business,’ says Tom Endean of the British Franchise Association. Its figures show that more than a third of new franchisees are run by females. Women’s parenting experience is particularly valued by many franchisors.

‘The opportunity to nurture young talent while building a strong business appeals to women in particular,’ says Kerry Watkins, the head of the LIPA 4:19 franchise, where nearly 70 per cent of franchisees are women.

LIPA 4:19 is an offshoot of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts co-founded by Sir Paul McCartney Noun 1. Paul McCartney – English rock star and bass guitarist and songwriter who with John Lennon wrote most of the music for the Beatles (born in 1942)
McCartney, Sir James Paul McCartney , and its franchisees run academies offering singing, dancing and acting lessons. Investment is [pounds sterling]13,500.

At the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts, 16 out of 20 franchisees are female. As with most stage skills franchises, you don’t need performing arts experience, as you can employ teachers, and the [pounds sterling]1,000 investment includes marketing, advertising and actress Pauline Quirke attending your launch.
Many Pop Stars Academy franchisees, who run sessions teaching street dance and dance-themed parties, are female. The cost is [pounds sterling]9,995 plus [pounds sterling]4,000 for equipment.

Women’s people skills can make them particularly suited to care businesses. Lorna Lyons-Smith of home care provider, SureCare, says: ‘The franchise care sector is an area where women excel.

‘Not only are they often financially astute, but they have chosen to work in an industry that they feel passionate about.’ Many SureCare franchisees have a care service background, but it’s not essential as Surecare provides support managers to guide you through the launch and ongoing operation of your business.

The franchise costs [pounds sterling]25,000, (a [pounds sterling]3,000 deposit, then staggered payments through the first year). Working from home is possible with many franchises.

The Hairforce – Lice Assassins (www.thehairforce.co.uk ) turn their home-based head lice removal service into a spa-like experience, with clients sitting in a massage chair to read, watch DVDs or play computer games. The [pounds sterling]9,950 package includes training and specialist equipment.

Many franchises allow you to work part-time or flexibly. ‘I work hard and long hours, but they can also be flexible,’ says Nancy Malone Nancy Malone (born March 19, 1935) is an American television actress, principally in guest roles from the 1950s to 1970s, who moved into producing and directing in the 1980s and 1990s.

She played “Libby” on the TV series Naked City from 1960 to 1963. , franchisee of the Energie Fitness for Women club in Hackney Hackney, inner borough (1991 pop. 164,200) of Greater London, SE England, on the Lea River. Clothing manufacture (in Hackney) and printing and furniture making (in Shoreditch) are the borough’s chief industries. London’s first theater was built in Shoreditch (c.1575). , London. You don’t need to be a trained fitness coach, and investment starts at [pounds sterling]19,000.

WORK out how much time you can give your business. Most franchisors expect you to put in a minimum number of hours. Franchisees with Rosemary Conley Rosemary Conley, CBE (b. 19 December 1946, Leicestershire) is an English businesswoman, author and broadcaster on exercise and health. She is the founder and president of Rosemary Conley Diet And Fitness Clubs, a franchise-based organisation that is, alongside Slimming World and  Diet and Fitness Clubs are expected to run at least ten fitness and nutrition sessions in local venues each week. The [pounds sterling]20,000 investment includes an exercise to music course plus business training and support.

Make sure you have the support of your partner and family. Kim Richardson, 27, co-owner of the Revive! franchise in Luton with partner Adam Smith, says: ‘It’s important to have your partner and family’s support. Sometimes you need someone to talk to who understands what you’re talking about.’ Revive! franchisees provide a small area repairs service to vehicles, and you can get started with [pounds sterling]10,000.

LIPA 4:19 0151 330 3000, Pauline Quirke Academy 08456 732 022, Popstars Academy 0870 850 6018, Energie 0845 363 1020, SureCare 01244 321 199, The Hairforce-Lice Assassins 020 7485 7351, Revive! 0800 056 2999, Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs 01509 622 000, Venture 01606 596 808. 

Go the the Daily Mail website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

AN OPPORTUNITY NIT TO BE MISSED

By Simon Read

Mirror Biz 

Our weekly look at Franchising and Business

A nit and headlice-removal franchise could be just the job to give you a headstart into running your very own business.

The Hairforce franchise was set up by London mum Dee Wright, a finalist in the Inspirational Business Mum Of The Year awards two years ago.

“I came up with the idea after I read about a company in the States that provided a headlice removal service.

“I had a good look and just thought, ‘I can do that so much better’,” says Dee.

After starting the business in her front room, Dee now has a Hairforce Lounge in Primrose Hill, North London, and is looking to build up a network of franchisees – or Lice Assassins.

Lice can hit any children, with half of all four to 11-year-olds in the UK catching nits each year.

Many traditional treatments prove useless as some bugs have become resilient to the chemicals used, leaving parents with little alternative than to scrape a painful lice comb through their kids’ hair several times.

Potential franchisees can provide great relief for parents and children, as well as building up a successful business.

They also don’t have to have any specialist knowledge to use the spa-like equipment – although most are mums who know about the problems of dealing with lice.

Customers are simply treated at home in a massage chair with a Lousebuster, which uses warm air to kill all the nits and head lice in one go by simply dehydrating them.

The business could be a part-time opportunity that can be run from home and visiting families in their homes, or by making speciallyarranged visits to schools to administer the painless treatment. Hairforce is being showcased at the British Franchise Exhibition being held at London’s Olympia on March 19 and 20. The franchise package costs £9,950 and includes all you need to start and run the business.

Find out more..

if you want to become a lice assassin email opportunity@thehairforce. co.uk or call 020 7485 7351.

www.thebfa.org is the main body for franchising in the uk.

www.whichfranchise.com offers lots of tips and advice on franchising.

 To view the article go to: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/03/04/an-opportunity-nit-to-be-missed-115875-22084423/

Lice-busters!

Head lice are an unpleasant business — and one that parents struggle to cope with. Treatments can be messy, ineffective, and expensive — but one innovative company has come to the rescue.

You can put this nitty problem in the hands of professionals at The Hairforce nit and head lice spa. They guarantee to eliminate all traces of head lice and their nits.

This specialised service is dedicated to killing all lice and nits without chemicals, by hand — strand by strand. All parents need to do is call the nit-busting hotline, arrange an appointment and arrive at the spa with their children in tow.

Currently, The Hairforce operate from Primrose Hill in London, but the good news is that this year they are looking to franchise the business, and bring it to Oxfordshire.

Upon arrival at the spa, children and adults are assigned an expert ‘Lice Assassin’. Armed with a lice hoover, medical magnifying visor, a LiceMeister nit comb, precision tweezers and a perfectionist streak, the Lice Assassin means business (pictured right).

While they defeat the little critters, clients relax in special massage chairs and are distracted with the latest computer games, DVDs and magazines.

Head lice, the bane of parents, have reached epidemic proportions here in the UK with an estimated three million children affected every year. In addition siblings, parents, grandparents, nannies and teachers are also susceptible.

A staggering £30m is spent annually on a variety of lotions, shampoos and treatments, which are proven to be ineffective 80 per cent of the time, as lice have developed immunity to them. In the worse cases, parents have used products for months, even years on end in the battle to clear their children and themselves.

The Hairforce guarantees its service is 100 per cent effective.

Company founder Dee Wright said: ‘I wanted to find a creative and effective solution to an ongoing and unpleasant disease which is so difficult to solve. Head lice and nits are becoming increasingly immune to previous methods of treatment, rendering most ineffective. We clear many people with major long term infestations that couldn’t be treated any other way.’ The Hairforce service currently operates from The Hairforce Lounge in Primrose Hill where children and parents are checked and cleared on an appointment basis six days-a-week. They also make home visits where Lice Assassins go to a client’s home to check or clear the entire family.

The Hairforce additionally acts as an in-school mobile Nit Nurse service, where teams of Lice Assassins go into schools to check and clear whole classes, or the whole school, to ensure the end of a cycle of infestation and reinfestation.

To access the article go to: http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/features/education_directory/4875632.Lice_busters_/

Waugh Zone

31st January 2010

 

DON’T TEAR YOUR HAIR OUT

Daisy Waugh

There was a stage at the beginning of swine flu when catching it had a snob value attached. It hit the expensive schools first, you may remember, because pupils were travelling back from exotic holidays in pox-ridden hot spots – and for a week or two it was quite smart to claim you had a case of it at home.

No longer, of course. Utter the words “swine flu” on this side of the pandemic – which was meant, by now, to have wiped out most of the human race – and people’s eyes glaze over with boredom and embarrassment. One day, I suppose, we’ll learn to stop attending to every Armageddon-style prophecy emanating from every government office. In the meantime, out of kindness,

I shan’t dwell on the matter of swine flu and the British propensity for mass hysteria at first whisper of snuffles, germs or “official warnings”. I shall move on.

To head lice, that other playground scourge, which never had quite the same glamour attached.

I get letters from my children’s schools occasionally asking parents to put some extra elbow grease into the unwinnable battle against them. And on those occasions I am often moved to act. But mostly, I have to admit, I’ve more or less given up. Like adultery and murder, so they say, lice infestations feel shocking – not to say shameful – on first experience, but after that it’s easy. I’ve come to the conclusion that the occasional visitation is an inescapable fact of childhood. And of motherhood, too, actually. I’ve also decided, rather conveniently, that like a lot of other things I can’t be bothered to be thorough about – organic diet, children’s homework and so on – it’s a bit bourgeois to get too het up about the ruddy things.

So I said to a friend of mine, who last month discovered a single nit on her eldest child’s head and within a day or two had laid down £500 professionally delousing her entire family. She had a team of people dressed like astronauts, wearing magnifying goggles and carrying vacuum cleaners with special lice-sucking attachments, come in a lorry to her sitting room.

I think she could sense my shock. “But don’t you realise,” she cried, “they were copulating on my daughter’s head! That’s what they do! They roam around sucking blood and looking for a mate, and then the female has a sperm sack, and she stores up all the extra sperm and she carries it around with her, so she can go on using it for ever.”

What a waste of money, I said sourly, scratching away.

But these things niggle, don’t they? It’s much cheaper if you visit the salon, in any case: £40 per head for the first visit, from which, ahem, my two youngest children and I have recently returned.

It’s in expensive Primrose Hill in north London, in a small groovy-looking room covered in scarlet wallpaper. Dee Wright, a posh working mother who’s won lots of Excellent Businesswoman awards, understands the difficulties rich mummies and daddies suffer, trying to have a nice time, as well as getting their and their children’s nits eradicated. So she makes the experience very pleasant. She provides Nintendo games and miniature DVD players for the children and Grazia magazine for the rich mummies. There was only one other present when we were there. She looked a bit like Cruella de Vil. She had a Chanel handbag and a long coat with a fur collar, and a BlackBerry, from which she did not look up.

Dee told me, while my hair was being hoovered by one of her astronauts, that it had been an exceptionally busy day. I wondered why, since term had started. She reminded me there were plenty of places where term had “only just” begun. “Plus there’s snow on the ground. Mum’s got jet lag. There’s no way she’s taking the kids to school.”

The company’s called The Hairforce – Lice Assassins, by the way, if you’re feeling rich and want a temporary break from all the scratching. But be warned – with or without the “home visit”, the salon costs add up. Or they’re meant to, if you do the thing properly. Each head is supposed to be hoovered three times, according to Dee Wright, just to be sure “the cycle is broken”.

We had the second round last night. I was planning to cancel, obviously, since the scratching had stopped. But I didn’t, did I? It’s the problem with expensive tastes; once acquired, they’re hard to shift. We were in good company, though. Thandie Newton was in the chair next to me, looking like a movie star even with the Hoover on her head.

 To view the article go to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article7004885.ece

IN NEED OF NITTY NORA

By: Nick Morrison

Headlice are rapidly climbing their way back into schools, prompting calls for the return of nit nurses, aka Nitty Noras. With a national campaign, a petition on the Number 10 website and massive online support, will the quest succeed?

It was a ritual part of the school calendar, as much a fixture as the nativity play and sports day. Shuffling along, you queued up in the corridor until you were admitted to the inner sanctum, where you bowed your head and waited for judgment to be passed.

But the days when the school nurse would rifle through your hair on the hunt for headlice are long gone. The nit nurse – known as Nitty Nora to generations of children – was gradually phased out in the 1980s and 90s, regarded both as an inefficient way of screening and as degrading to those found harbouring the beasts.

Now, though, there are signs that headlice are on the advance again, increasingly resistant to the chemicals deployed against them. Although there are few reliable figures on the level of infestations, one study in Welsh primary schools showed the number of cases has doubled this decade.

A survey in Essex in 2003 found approximately one in 50 children had headlice, and almost four in 10 had caught them at some time in the previous 12 months. Even reality show contestants are not immune. It was reported last year that quiff-loving X Factor twins John and Edward had introduced headlice into the house they shared with their fellow contestants.

“Infestations are going up right across the developed world,” says Joanna Ibarra, of Community Hygiene Concern, a charity that promotes ways of tackling head lice. “Conventional insecticides are often simply not effective because the lice have become resistant.”

The apparent profusion of headlice has prompted calls for the return of Nitty Nora. A survey on the website netmums.com found almost 90 per cent support for the nit nurse to make a comeback, while a petition on the Number 10 website, running until May 18 this year, urges the Prime Minister to restore nit nurses in schools. Four previous petitions on the subject have collected between 189 and 383 signatories.

Lucy Weis’s introduction to headlice came when her eldest daughter caught them aged six. Attempts to vanquish the critters using special shampoos proved fruitless. “You buy all the lotions and use them but three or four lotions later you start thinking you can’t get rid of them,” she says.

Her frustration drove Mrs Weis, a mother-of-four from Colwyn Bay in north Wales, to launch the Nitty Nora campaign for the return of the nit nurse. She argues that even if parents manage to vanquish the bugs in their own child’s hair, there is a good chance they will be reinfested by classmates. It is only school-wide action, she says, that can banish them for good.

“Parents are happy to do it but because there is no co-ordination, they do their child’s hair and they go back into school and catch them again,” she says. “That is why we liked the nit nurse: she would come in and do everybody in the school.”

But she doesn’t envisage a return to the days of whole-school inspections. Rather than examining every child’s head in turn, the nit nurse should organise whole-school action against headlice, she says, as well as helping parents who struggle to deal with the problem.

In extreme cases, parents can be overwhelmed. Or sometimes don’t even try. A Norfolk mother was jailed for five months last year for neglect after her daughter’s hair was found to be crawling with lice. A social worker had thought the nine-year-old’s hair was dyed. Closer inspection revealed the “colour” was really thousands of headlice.

Headlice rarely pose a medical danger. The lice feed by sucking blood from their victim’s scalp. Their saliva can cause itching, but the biggest health risk is if repeated scratching makes the wounds bigger and opens them up to infection. Often of greater concern is the stigma carried by headlice. While the humiliation of being singled out by the nit nurse is, for now, consigned to the past, the shame of being portrayed as the source of an outbreak remains. And what is true for parents and their children is equally true for schools: no one wants to own up to having a problem.

One headteacher, speaking on condition the name of her school was withheld, says reports of headlice among pupils can be very alarming for parents. Her school, a primary in the north of England, gained unwelcome publicity last year when a parent contacted the local paper to claim her child had been given headlice by classmates.

The school’s PTA produced a guide for parents on how to get rid of the lice, but the damage had already been done. “Parents often find it degrading and when their child keeps getting it and they see no end to it, that is when it becomes frustrating,” the head says.

Her 30 years in education stretch back to the days when nit nurses were a common sight in schools, but she doesn’t believe they were effective in weeding out headlice. Rather than spending time checking every child’s head, school nurses these days are better employed focusing on issues such as child protection and obesity, she says. Instead, parents should take responsibility for regularly checking their child’s hair for lice, and taking remedial action if they are found.

Ros Godson, who represents school nurses for the union Unite, says blanket screening of school-aged children – including checking for headlice – was phased out because it was seen as inefficient. “Children used to have medicals as well, but this type of approach isn’t a good use of the school nurse’s time,” she says.

But the problem with putting the onus on the parent is that it only takes one to fail to perform their duty properly for a whole class to be reinfested. Mrs Weis, whose involvement in the Nitty Nora campaign has prompted neighbours to bring their children to her for delousing, says the flaw in this approach can make all a parent’s hard work in ridding their children of lice redundant.

And it’s not just the children. One poster on the TES Connect website, a primary school teacher, says she caught headlice three times last term. “Is there anything I can do to fend them off or must I resign myself to being infested until I retire?” she asks. Other posters recommend tying your hair back and keeping it away from the children as the most effective way of avoiding catching them.

The market for treatments to get rid of lice is worth about £30 million a year in the UK. But chemical lotions are only recommended when live lice have been spotted, as they are often ineffective against eggs. Combing using special nit combs is the other recognised method of lice removal.

Community Hygiene Concern developed its own Bug Buster kit, including wide and narrow-toothed combs, to combat lice. The charity also promotes National Bug Busting Days in schools, to encourage a synchronised effort to check for lice. The next Bug Busting Day is January 31.

This co-ordinated approach is proven to be the most effective way of eliminating headlice, says Ms Ibarra. It was pioneered on Teesside in the 1970s by the father of the current chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, when it halved the level of infestation.

One problem with the nit nurse approach is that when dry, lice will quickly move away from any disturbance in the hair. Wet lice, by contrast, tend to stay completely still. Checking the hair when it is wet therefore makes the lice easier to spot.

“The school nurse would miss all but the worst cases,” says Ms Ibarra. “They rely on being able to see lice on the head, but the lice rush away as the fingers move through the hair.”

Instead of nit nurses, schools should encourage parents to check their child’s hair when wet, and organise synchronised hair-checking to have the best chance of making sure re-infestations don’t occur, she says.

The majority of cases involve only about 10 lice and no itching, so many parents may be unaware their children even have lice. Regular checks where parents check their children will uncover even these “hidden” infestations.

“You might succeed in getting rid of the lice but if you are sending your child back into an environment where they are likely to catch lice again you could be none the wiser,” she says.

Some schools have turned to more drastic measures. Hairforce is a north London company that specialises in eradicating lice, through its team of “lice assassins”. Founder Dee Wright says they have been employed by a number of schools to deal with lice outbreaks.

Their approach is to carefully go through the hair with special combs. When called in by a school, five lice assassins go in to check every child’s hair thoroughly, before informing the school of whether it has a light, medium or heavy infestation.

“Checking every child can be really useful in letting a school know what is going on, but it would be very hard for one nurse to be able to do that in a school of 250 children,” Ms Wright says. “We might be there for a day and a half and school nurses don’t really have the time to do that.”

Recent cases treated by Hairforce include a boy who had about 450 adult lice on his head, and a girl who had been infested for six years. The Hairforce method, which costs £120 per child per treatment, involves three separate appointments over a period of several weeks, and guarantees to remove all lice.

But there can never be a guarantee they won’t come back through contact with another infested head. Only a concerted campaign of vigilance can hope to keep the lice at bay, and in the continued absence of the nit nurse, it looks like it’s up to schools to ensure parents get on board. Perhaps it’s time to take the stigma out of the louse and show the critter we mean business.

Nitty Nora campaign: www.nitworks.co.uk; Hairforce: www.thehairforce.co.uk

Bug Busting kits cost £5.95 plus postage and packing from www.nits.net or the Community Hygiene Concern helpline 01908 561928

Headlice facts

• Headlice is the name of the hatched creatures; nits refers to the eggs.
• Eggs take seven to 10 days to hatch; lice take six to 14 days to become fully grown, when they are capable of reproducing.
• A louse life span is about three weeks.
• A female louse lays about five eggs a day, more than 100 during the course of its life.
• Lice use a glue to attach their eggs to hair strands near the scalp.

Headlice myths

Myth: Headlice prefer clean hair

• Lice like any sort of hair, clean or dirty, although regularly washing and combing hair makes them easier to detect.

Myth: Lice can jump from one head to another

• Lice cannot fly, jump or hop. They spread through head-to-head contact.

Myth: Headlice can be caught from animals

• Headlice affect only humans and cannot be caught from, or passed on to, animals.

Myth: Headlice will not live on a shaved head

• Headlice can live on hairs as short as half a centimetre, although shorter hair may make them easier to spot.

Myth: Clothes and bedding need to be fumigated after a headlice infestation

• Headlice need to maintain contact with a host body to survive, and any that leave the host voluntarily are likely to be approaching death and unable to start a new colony.

 To connect to the TES website go to: www.tes.co.uk