Some friends of mine had to be treated because their housemates were infected." By spending a lot of time in each others’ homes, cuddling and sleeping in each others’ beds, students enabled the mites to spread much faster".Īnne knows some fellow students who also became infected with scabies. "In some groups of friends, almost everyone has had it. "All the restaurants and nightclubs were closed, causing students to throw more house parties. The GP suspects that the pandemic might have played a role in the scabies outbreak. By the time you realise you have scabies, you may have already infected other people, who will in their turn infect others." "During those ten weeks, you are contagious. My GP had no idea why it didn’t go away either."Īccording to Utrecht-based GP Sanne Hillebrand, scabies can spread for quite a while without being noticed because their incubation period can take up to ten weeks. At some point, I put everything from my closet in plastic bags and left it there for a week. During the day you wash your bed linen and the next morning you wash it again. Your bed has to be clean every time you go to sleep. "I must have washed my bedlinen a million times. I followed the treatment by the book, but scabies just kept coming back". Everything I touched had to be washed at 60 degrees every time. "I was lubricating, taking pills, lubricating, taking pills. Three months, eight ointments and five pill strips later, the scabies was completely gone. And since the itch only got worse and worse, she was prescribed pills in addition to the ointment. With Anna, the scabies bumps just kept coming back. Roommates should do the same to prevent (re)contamination. Strict hygiene measures are also part of the treatment: one has to wash all clothes, bed linen and towels at 60 degrees or keep them in sealed bin bags for three days. The ointment is available behind the counter, but the pills require a prescription. Scabies can be treated with an ointment like permethrin or with ivermectin pills. After five days I called my GP again because I just couldn’t stand the itch anymore." "It only made things worse because the gloves made my hands warmer. She also wore gloves at night to keep herself from scratching her skin. She tried to suppress the itch with home remedies, like antihistamines. "One night, during exam week, I was lying awake crying, thinking: "And I absolutely have to take an exam tomorrow." "The itch kept me up for several nights," says Anna, who was itchy on her hands, feet and armpits. Itch mites get especially active at night, in a warm bed. The skin can also show streaks where the mite digs its passages. No wonder itch mites have "itch" in their name: they plague their new residents with extreme itching, red spots and small bumps. It can also be transferred through clothes, towels, and bed linen.Īlthough it’s a relatively harmless skin condition, scabies can be pretty annoying. If you have more than 15 minutes of immediate skin contact with someone with scabies, the mite can "jump across". These larvae are so small that they can hardly be spotted with the naked eye. After a week, the eggs hatch into larvae that live on the skin. Our fingers, wrists and the inside of our elbows are their favourite places to lay eggs. The female mite uses its prickly legs to dig passages in the epidermis. Scabies is caused by the itch mite, also known as Sarcoptes cabiei var hominis. Another doctor, Sanne Hillebrand of the Daltonlaan GP practice, agrees there’s been "an increase compared to two or three years ago." GPs in Utrecht cannot help but notice the increase in their practice. Sanneke Molthof, general practitioner and board member of umbrella organisation Utrecht City GPs, has been noticing "many more problems related to scabies" in the city, especially among students. While in 2014, a hundred people were affected by scabies per 100,000 inhabitants, in 2019 this number raised to 210 cases and in 2020, to 260 cases. The number of scabies cases has been slowly increasing these past few years. The number of people seeing a doctor because of scabies has been strongly increasing since the autumn of 2021, according to the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (Nivel in the Dutch acronym). At first, she thought she might be allergic to something, but when her skin started to show streaks as well, the penny finally dropped: "I've got to see my GP, I have scabies." That's why she prefers not to share her story under her real name here. However, earlier this year, Anna herself started getting small bumps. He was treated for it and his symptoms disappeared - so, thus far, nothing out of the ordinary. Last year, she spent the night with a guy who had suffered from scabies a while before. Anna* studies Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University.
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