Does Afro-Caribbean hair attract head lice?
25 Jul 04 Q Can children with Afro-Caribbean hair get head lice? A The belief that Afro-Caribbean children do not get head lice is an urban myth – as is patently obvious to anybody who has spent time in a UK African community. Incident rates are lower in children in some Afro-Caribbean communities for the same reason incident rates are low in adults – grooming. Hair grooming – including frequent combing, cutting, styling, heating, colouring, bleaching and gel or pomade or wax application – are all activities that remove head lice. This coupled with decreased physical communal proximity (we do not crowd adults into classrooms to foster parasite transmission) lowers incidence in adults. It is a common practice to straighten African-type hair with pomades etc, or to keep the hair extremely short (less than 1mm). These activities make establishing a head louse colony difficult. African-type hair is difficult to wet comb, so this alone is unlikely to be an effective control or cure.
