If you have children and they attend school or a child care center, or if they have contact with any other children at all, there is a good chance that they could contract head lice. This is obviously no reason to keep your child sheltered. Its just one of those parental things you should be aware of.

Head lice are a type of parasitical insect that lives on human blood. They take up residence on our scalps, eat our blood, and lay eggs on our hair follicles. They come strictly from other humans and cannot be passed to animals. They dont live for very long if theyre not on a host, so the best way to catch them is through contact with someone who is infected.

Catching head lice is fairly common among children aged three to 12, and theres good reason for this. Children of this age group generally have a lot of physical contact with one another, and sharing combs, hats, blankets, and clothes is a frequent occurrence. This is why outbreaks of lice are taken so seriously at schools. Two cases of head lice can very quickly jump to 200 cases.

Lice Treatment Is a Multi-Step Process
Once your child has lice, youll have to perform a very vigilant lice patrol to make sure that you get rid of them. This will most likely involve washing their hair with a special lice-killing shampoo, and then combing their hair with a specially designed lice comb. The initial washing kills the majority of the live lice, and the combing takes out the remaining eggs. You will then have to thoroughly wash any bedding that the infected person has come into contact with.