POLICY ON HEAD LICE
Please notify the school office if you find lice in
your child’s hair. This will help to
contain the spread of lice in the school. Upon checking the student
in school, it will be
necessary that a parent pick up a child immediately if any nits or
lice are found. Readmittance
from the health office will only be allowed after proper treatment
is received at home, all
nits are removed and the health office staff conducts a negative
head recheck. We have a
No-Nit policy, which means that a student is not allowed to return
to school until all nits
are removed. Bus transportation will not be available until the
child is readmitted through the
school health office.
Description of Head Lice Infestation
Lice are blood-sucking insects which can inhabit the hair of
the head. Lice are sensitive
to extreme temperature; they require normal body temperature to
survive and they move
by crawling. The head louse lays its eggs (nits) on a strand of
hair; nits are about 1/32” in
size, grayish-white, and have a glistening appearance if viable.
Dead nits are dull and dry
in appearance. Head lice migrate from host to host through direct
person to person
contact, or indirectly through bed linen, head gear, hair brushes,
combs, hats, and coats.
TREATMENT
Treatment is directed at the infested individual and his/her
personal articles.
Individual
Treatment
1. Remove all of the child’s clothing, place him/her in
a bath or shower, and put the
clothing in a plastic bag.
2. Apply special medicated shampoo and wash the hair according to
the label
directions. There are medicated liquids and gels available at any
drug store for head lice
(Rid, A-200 Pryinate, Kwell*, etc.). Kwell is available by
prescription only; the others
may be purchased without prescription. There is no published
evidence that one product
is superior to the others.
3. Rinse the hair with a warm vinegar solution to loosen nits.
4. Comb hair with a fine-tooth comb to remove any remaining
nits.
5. Have your child put on clean clothing after the treatment.
6. If hair is long and thick, it will take longer to remove all
nits and may require another
application of shampoo in 24 hours. Do not exceed recommended dose
of application.
7. Check all family members, and if they show evidence of
infestation they also should
be treated.
8. Repeat treatment in 7 to 10 days. While the medicated liquids
rapidly kill crawling
lice, they may not kill all the nits. Therefore, the treatment
should be repeated in 7 to 10
days to kill newly hatched lice. The 7 to 10 day interval
corresponds to the incubation
period of a louse’s egg.
 jpeg.jpg)
.jpg)
