Amid tough economic times, there is no doubt that cuts are being made around town. Whether cuts to funding head-lice prevention are resulting in an increase in cases of the parasitic bug, however, is up for debate.
Funding in relation to head lice was cut in 2001, said Nick Claussen, spokesman for Athens County Job and Family Services.
“We had funding to pay for nurses and such. Then in 2001, we lost a lot of funding, including funding for head-lice programs in schools,” Claussen said.
Despite the cuts, Athens City Schools’ nurse, Janalee Stock, said she doesn’t believe the funding cuts have had any direct connection to cases of head lice.
“It’s not funding cuts that directly relate to head lice cases,” Stock said. “Years ago, Athens County Job and Family Services had a lice project where a nurse worked specifically with head lice. While this was going on we experienced a record low amount of head-lice cases.”
Claussen, however, said he believes that these services are essential to the community.
“This sort of funding helps to provide services and prevent things like head lice. They allow students to perform better and avoid poverty down the road,” Claussen said.
Head lice has plagued humans for millennia, said Chuck Hammer, administrator of the Athens City-County Health Department.
“Head lice are a human problem. We have had them for tens of thousands of years,” Hammer said. “When they occur, they can be disruptive with kids in school. It requires a lot of careful attention to rid someone of them. They must be eliminated on an individual basis.”
Hammer also explained why kids seem to be the only ones who spread the hair-dwelling bug.
“(Kids) don’t often recognize that they have (lice) themselves,” Hammer said. “They must have head-to-head contact to spread them. When kids are out playing, that’s where they usually have head-to-head contact.”
Once a child gets head lice, they can be extremely difficult to deal with and remove.
“There are things like pesticide shampoo, yet since it has been around for so long, the lice have been able to adapt to it and it hasn’t been as effective,” Hammer said. “Nothing replaces going through the hair and manually removing them, even though it takes a lot of time and attention.”
Stock said the adaptations of the bugs have even more to do with the recent rise in head-lice cases than the funding cuts from more than a decade ago do.
Though she does not have a definite number, she feels that the number of cases she has seen this year are an increase over years past.
“It’s really a problem for the families,” Stock said. “It is very tedious and expensive to get rid of. When you have families where both parents are working full-time jobs and are running on a tight budget, it’s very difficult to deal with.
“For instance, if a child lives at two different houses, they must be treated at both places to ensure that the bugs don’t come back.”
Hammer believes it comes down to people just taking the time to deal with this issue.
“It isn’t something that takes specialized medical personnel, rather, just ordinary people being able to recognize the lice and remove them with a nit removal comb,” he said.
Whether or not these funding cuts have had an effect on head lice cases is able to be measured, the affects of these cuts are felt throughout the area.
“I would say funding cuts have caused a lot of problems,” Claussen said. “We can’t help these people in poverty. Just simple things like preventing head lice and providing nurses help people do better in school. Yet, these funding cuts prevent us from being able to provide these programs.”
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