An Investigation on Prevalence and Awareness of Elementary School Students Infested with Head Lice in Hualien County

Sucking blood by infested head lice would cause the victims to suffer from scalp itching, to be unable to fall into deep, sound sleep at night, and even get infected with various transmittable diseases. In this study, we chose two elementary schools in the rural Hualien County in eastern Taiwan, i.e. School A with a pupil population of 7 and located in mountainous Sioulin Township, and School B with 261 pupils and in non-mountainous Guangfu Township, as the sites to conduct this study. The objective of this study was to find out: what those pupils and their parents knew about head lice infestation and what the current prevalence of it was among the pupils attending those two schools. The investigation approaches adopted consisted of a semi-structural questionnaire designed mainly for the first awareness part of the objective, and a down-to-earth naked eye inspection for the second part dealing with infestation prevalence. Understandably, the questionnaire was to be filled out only by elder pupils of Grade 3 and beyond, while the subjects of the naked eye inspection covered the entire pupil population of the two schools.