Head lice are nothing new, yet they can make many parents shudder at the thought of carrying out time-consuming treatments and comforting a distressed child.

Head lice are tiny, wingless insects that live in human hair. They live close to the scalp for warmth, as well as to feed on their host’s blood several times a day. While lice may be found anywhere on the scalp, their eggs are commonly found behind the ears and at the nape of the neck.

Head lice are grey-brown in colour and are around the size of a pinhead when hatched and a sesame seed when fully grown. Lice cannot fly, jump or swim. They are spread by head-to-head contact, as they climb from the hair of an infected person to the hair of somebody else. Each louse has six legs, ending in a claw that helps it to grip. An adult louse can live for about 30 days, but will usually die within a day if it falls off its host. Head lice do not spread disease.

Although infection can disrupt a sufferer’s sleep and cause a general feeling of malaise, head lice in themselves are not a serious health concern. In fact, head lice rarely cause any physical symptoms other than an irritating, itchy scalp. It’s more often the social stigma associated with head lice that causes distress, rather than the symptoms.

The 2012 update of The Stafford Report by the Public Health Medicine Environmental Group (PHMEG) confirmed that many of the issues associated with head lice are due to society’s reaction to an infection. Pharmacy teams should reassure customers that head lice are common and are not an indicator of poor hygiene. It’s difficult to determine exact head lice infection rates as they can often be treated successfully at home, with people only contacting a healthcare professional if treatments are ineffective.

However, according to NHS Choices, around one in three children will get head lice at some point each year. But despite their high prevalence, there is still a lot of confusion surrounding the onset of head lice, how they spread and how best to treat them. Here, we take a closer look at head lice and outline how pharmacy teams can help to educate customers on how to prevent, detect and treat head lice effectively.