An itching business

Bug busting, an ancient technique updated, involves the regular wet combing of hair with a special fine toothcomb and regular hair conditioner. Promoted by the Department of Health, it has become the accepted way to tackle this itchy menace.

Make sure you use the comb specially created for the Bug Busting campaign, because it’s believed to have the most effective design. Twice weekly combing sessions are needed for a total of four sessions. The first combing session should remove all the adult lice. Thereafter, you should only snare baby lice. However, if during later sessions you find big ones reappearing, your child has been re-infested and you will need to keep on combing for a few more sessions. Success demands time and commitment. Keep at it.

Recently, bug busting has come in for criticism, following new doubts about its effectiveness. A study among 4,000 schoolchildren in North Wales, published in the Lancet , summer 2000, found that wet combing cured only 38% of louse cases, compared with 78% for insecticide lotions which are washed into the hair.

Bug busting can work but it simply takes too long, says Ian Burgess of the Medical Entomology Centre, Cambridge. In his research he has found children crawling with as many as 250 lice and estimates that to remove that number in a large family of six would take six hours a week. However, Joanna Ibarra, the Programme Co-ordinator from Community Hygiene Concern, the charity which organises Bug Busting Day, is critical of the report in the Lancet, claiming that participants weren’t using the latest state-of-the-art comb (which has a special slant making it easier to lift out lice from near the scalp), and that a longer term view is needed. She sees the Bug Busting success rate of 38% as a positive result, especially given that the participants weren’t offered any particular encouragement.