This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Minnesota Parents "Bugged" by Change In Lice Policy in Schools -- Parent Responsibility Escalates Heading Into Summer

Is there a louse in your house? If you’re a Minnesota parent, it may now be your responsibility to know. Due to parental requests for privacy, and recent rulings by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association that lice is not considered a public health threat, individual school districts carry the decision on how to handle it, and many are making it the parents’ responsibility. As a result, many moms and dads are turning to the Minnesota Lice Lady for guidance, while others are unaware that the task has now been placed in their hands. Gonne (pronounced HON-na) Asser is the Minnesota Lice Lady and a regional expert on eradicating head lice. Asser is the best kind of “nitpicker”. She’s committed to helping kids get rid of it, including the kids in Mother Teresa’s orphanage.in India where she spent her vacation removing head lice. Gonne has also trains staff and consults with schools across the Twin Cities. As summer approaches, Asser is concerned about the head to head contact that comes along with continuous play at sleepovers and camps. She says teachers are somewhat trained to spot head lice during the school year, where camp counselors and parents are at a disadvantage due to lack of awareness and training. Lice and nits can be incredibly hard to spot since not all people infected with them have itchy scalps. They can be very hard to get rid of too. Asser says that’s because most all the over-the-counter shampoos don’t work anymore. Many of those products contain a pesticide called permethrin. Lice have become resistant to the chemical and the latest studies show it only kills about 46% of adult lice and doesn’t kill nits at all. Asser attributes her successful nitpicking at her salon to three essential strategies - Use of a special nit free comb, an enzyme-based shampoo and most importantly, going through every hair on the head, strand by strand and removing every louse and nit. Disagreements over whether children infected with lice should be allowed in school also led to the change in Minnesota’s “No Nit Policy” and once those changes were made, school nurses promptly stopped sending kids home when diagnosed with head lice. Now, most school nurses simply send home an instruction sheet for getting rid of it and according to Asser, the recommended treatment is ineffective. To find out more about head inspection and removing lice with 100% certainty and to connect with the Minnesota Lice Lady, call her salon at 612-564-0678.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?