Head Lice in Norwegian Households: Actions Taken, Costs and Knowledge

Introduction: Head lice infestations cause distress in many families. A well-founded strategy to reduce head lice prevalence must shorten the infectious period of individual hosts. To develop such a strategy, information about the actions taken (inspection, treatment and informing others about own infestations), level of knowledge and costs is needed. The present study is the first to consider all these elements combined. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire was answered by 6203 households from five geographically separate

The prevalence of common skin infections in four districts in Timor-Leste: a cross sectional survey

Background\ud Skin infections are a common public health problem in developing countries; however, they are rarely managed using a population based approach. Recent data on the burden of skin infections in Timor-Leste are limited. Our survey appears to be the only widespread survey conducted in more than 30 years and was designed to determine the baseline prevalence of some common skin infections in Timor-Leste.\ud \ud Methods\ud We conducted a cross sectional survey in 14 sites including community health clinics, schools and hospitals within four different geographical regions. Participants were examined for five conditions (scabies, pyoderma, fungal infections, leprosy and yaws) by a multidisciplinary team. Analyses were conducted using EpiInfo version 6.04d.\ud \ud Results\ud We examined the skin of 1535 participants aged between four months and 97 years. The majority of participants were male, aged between 11 and 20 years and had at least one condition of interest (56.0%, 56.0%, and 63.1%, respectively). Fungal infections were the most common presentation (39.0%) and males were more commonly affected than females (42.3% vs 34.0%, respectively, pvalue < 0.0001).\ud \ud Among those people with more than one condition the two most common co-infections were scabies with either pyoderma or a fungal infection (38.0% and 32.0%, respectively). The survey identified 29 previously undiagnosed cases of leprosy and six cases of yaws.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud Our findings indicate the need for a comprehensive programme to address these conditions. There are successful disease control programmes in place within the country and it is hoped a healthy skin programme could be integrated into an established disease control programme in order to maximise health benefits and resources