WHEN THE children are back in the classrooms after the long summer holidays, teachers and parents should be on the alert for signs of the skin fungus, ringworm.
Dr. Patricia Yap, dermatologist, said that when the schools disperse for
holidays, some children while away the time in the countryside and sometimes they come back to school with ringworm on the scalp and other parts of the skin. This fungus is very contagious, spreads easily in the ideal environment of the classroom and is difficult to control.
The name ringworm is a misnomer because the condition really has nothing to do with worms. It is an itchy, ringlike patch appearing on the skin. There are three major reservoirs for the ringworm fungus, Dr. Yap explained humans, animals (for example, cats, dogs, cows) and soil.
"If the children go to the country and pick up the animal ringworm, that one tends to have a lot of pus when it appears on humans, though we may not even notice it on animals' hairs because their normal habitat is on the animals. Humans, however, consider them a foreign invader and they react to them violently," Dr. Yap said.
Usually, this aggressive animal-type fungus, she said, appears on the children with a bag of pus in the centre of skin fungus.
"Sometimes we have to pull out the pus before we treat the condition... The human type of the fungus is a more gentile type perhaps, just a little flaking on the scalp, because they normally live with us," she said.
Dr. Yap said that when the scalp is infected, parents will notice several patches of hairloss and they may or may have pus or flakes.
"Ring worm comes in many forms, it can come in clusters... but there is another form that looks almost like dry scalp, so some people may think that it is only dandruff and they keep washing it with anti-dandruff shampoo, not realising that it is ring worm. How can you tell the difference because both types can result in hairloss," she said.
So patches of hairloss and pus at the hair root should alert caregivers to the possibility of ringworm. In addition, Dr. Yap indicates that a good clinical marker, a tell-tale sign of the fungal infection in the children is the swollen lymph node in the area behind the ears (what Jamaicans call 'wax and cannon') sign of the invasion of a foreign entity in the body.
Ringworm is a public health issue and Dr. Yap said that once the condition is identified in the classroom, the children should be given letters to be taken to their respective doctors or clinics for treatment. It is more effective to treat entire families and not just the child, otherwise the disease will keep going around and around.
Dr. Yap also said that there is a misunderstanding that once the children catch ringworm, they should stay away from school. She said that the current recommendation from the Ministry of Health is that once affected children are on treatment, they can go back to school, (usually the treatment lasts between one and two months).
"They need a note from their doctors to say that their treatment has started and if the child is uncomfortable with the appearance of his scalp, I always include, in the note, 'please allow this patient to wear headgear, for the duration of the treatment', because children can be cruel to each other. So, it may be a good idea for them to wear headgear until their hair starts growing out," said Dr. Yap.
