WATCH ABOVE: Several schools in Edmonton are reporting more cases of lice. As Fletcher Kent shows us, it’s a problem that has left parents at their nit’s end.
EDMONTON — A mutant strain of lice, immune to traditional treatments, now dominates Canadian cases.
Super lice, as they’re often called, don’t come with any X-Men-like mutant powers, except perhaps to make your head itch just by reading about them. But the strain, which constitutes 97 per cent of head-lice cases, is resistant to the key ingredients in most treatment shampoos, creams and sprays.
That means parents and schools are losing the battle against the pesky, blood-sucking parasites that tend to infest school-age children. In Edmonton, the public board has seen an increase in lice cases.
“It tends to happen more when the cold weather hits and kids are putting their toques on and that kind of thing,” says Wilma Bayko, principal of La Perle school, which had about three cases this fall.
She blames selfies, in part, because kids often press their heads together to fit in the camera frame. Lice spread by head-to-head human contact and by sharing hats, hair ties or brushes.
Once they’ve infiltrated a child’s hair, the pests can be a pain to eradicate.
Stephanie Gower fought the battle of a lifetime when her children were infected this summer — twice in one month.
“I’m combing through my daughter’s hair and this little thing goes scuttling across her head … I was repulsed, quite frankly. It’s my daughter’s head and I was ready to drop and run, which is probably not my proudest mummy moment.”
That was just the beginning.
“An hour and a half every night to get through half of her head. And then we’d flip over and do the other half the next night. And it was every spare minute we had. We shaved my son’s head, just to make it easier. And it didn’t stop the lice. We got almost rid of them and then they came back.”
What makes removal trickier, is the life cycle of a louse.
Female lice can lay more than three eggs daily, which take up to 10 days to hatch. If you miss even one of those eggs, you will have to do the whole process all over again. The lice themselves can live for 30 days.
So what’s the best way to get rid of lice?
Pesticides are no longer recommended.
A study from the University of Massachusetts found less than three per cent of cases can be successfully treated with the chemicals that used to kill 100 per cent of the pests 20 years ago.
Aside from a lot of patience, the most important removal tool now seems to be a fine-toothed comb. It should have teeth that are long enough to take the eggs out. Edmonton’s “Nice Lice Lady” has some recommendations, as does the Lice Squad, a company that removes lice without chemicals.
The business of lice removal
“Put it this way, we can’t keep up with the demand,” says Lice Squad president Dawn Mucci.
“It is, at the end of the day, an essential service and there is a demand.”
Mucci, who is based in Toronto, says from Edmonton alone she averages between five to ten calls a week. To keep up with the growing demand, she hopes to hire a franchise owner in the city. Right now, there are only “mobile consultants.”
The cost of the service, which typically takes up to an hour-and-a-half, is $75 per hour.
“What will take us an hour, an hour and a half may take someone else five, six hours. And that’s a lot of time out of someone’s life, and it’s something that’s extremely difficult to do,” Saskatoon Lice Squad franchise owner Marni Farn said in an interview with Global News earlier this year.
READ MORE: Tips to treat head lice and prevent reinfestation
WATCH: The Lice Squad even holds “lice removal parties.”
Changing ‘lousy’ attitudes
Part of what the Lice Squad tries to do, is eliminate the stigma associated with lice.
“Head lice do not discriminate,” explains Mucci.
Contrary to popular belief, children with dirty or greasy hair are not the problem. Some experts say head lice actually prefer long, clean hair.
When Gower’s two children had lice this summer, she says she was surprised by how judgemental people were.
“Because my kids are no different than any other kids. They were just unlucky.”
With files from Fletcher Kent, Laura Zilke and Carey Marsden, Global News
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