Chapter 1: What is the warning issued to students in Waterford about?
Students in Waterford are being warned of a minor outbreak of scabies on the South East Technological University campus. Scabies, which is treatable, is a skin condition caused by a tiny mite that gets under the skin and lays eggs. Scott Walken is the Irish College of General Practitioners lead for infection control and a Mayo-based GP. He joins me on the line. Morning, Scott.
Morning.
Morning, David.
Chapter 2: What causes scabies and how is it transmitted?
How are you today?
Well, not the better for hearing about scabies. A mice that gets under the skin and lays eggs. That sounds very nasty. It's as uncomfortable as it sounds.
Well, it is really, David. It's an intensely itchy condition. And, you know, funny enough, I think people, even as they listen to this, will probably find that they feel a little bit itchy because it's just such a visceral thing, isn't it? It literally makes our skin crawl. So very unpleasant, very itchy. And it's quite contagious. So direct hand-to-hand contact tends to cause it.
Now, shaking hands is unlikely to cause it to be passed on. But even relatively brief contact of skin to skin for, say, five minutes will tend to cause it to be passed on. So it's really contagious within households. And it's interesting. It's actually it's not the mite itself that causes the itch. It's the body's immune system responding to the mite.
And what that means is that we can be infected with it for a number of weeks before we would start to feel itchy. In other words, people can have it and not really know about it. And can they pass it on at that stage? They can. They can. And what that means is that it is crucially important that anybody who has had contact with somebody known to have scabies
is treated and contact means household contact or in the case of a university staying in the same hall of residence. are overnight visitors. So they would all be considered contacts. And even if they don't have symptoms, even if they don't have the itch, they would still need to be treated. Because the real difficulty with scabies is if everybody isn't treated adequately, it can come back.
And then there's a whole cycle starts again and everybody needs to be treated again. So it's a little bit involved. So it is the treatment.
It sure is. Well, OK, what is the treatment?
So there's a lotion that's used and that's the most commonly used treatment called Light Clear or permethrin. And everybody needs to be treated. Everybody who's at risk needs to be treated at the same time. They put the lotion on from generally below the ears down all over the body and they leave it on overnight and then they wash it off the next day.
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Chapter 3: How can someone be infected with scabies without knowing?
It can affect anybody. OK. And, you know, I might just say, there's a misconception about it that it can be in some way related to poor hygiene. And that is absolutely not the case. It's something that's transmitted from hand to hand and it has nothing to do with, you know, personal hygiene.
And if you don't get adequate treatment, apart from spreading it to other people, are there long-term consequences from it?
Well, it is so incredibly itchy and uncomfortable that people essentially are forced to get treatment. But if it's treated inadequately, that's probably a commoner situation. It can impact sleep and that can have impacts on energy and mental health. If any of us are very sleep-deprived, it will kind of get in on us, you know.
But there's no, sometimes they can get infected, but with, you know, like a bacterial infection, they can get an extra infection on top of them with all the scratching. But usually what happens is it's so intensely itchy that people come for treatment when they start to get those symptoms.
Yeah. And once you've taken your first round of treatment, the ointment that you've described is quite an involved process. Can you go about your daily life at that stage?
Yes.
Yes. So if somebody has scabies, they should avoid contact with other people. You know, children shouldn't go to school, for example. But once they have been treated, once they have had treatment, 24 hours later, they can then return to school. It might be useful for people to have access to high quality information.
And the Health Protection Surveillance Centre website has a page with fact sheets on scabies.
Okay. Scott Walken, Irish College of General Practitioners, lead for infection control and Mayo-based GP. Thank you so much for bringing us that this morning.
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