\u201cWhen I first found out, I was pretty horrified because I thought it was a dirty disease,\u201d 65-year-old Julie said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve kind of got used to it now, but every time it happens it\u2019s made me cry because it\u2019s so mentally draining.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pukekohe Family Health Care said there was a rise in reported cases in Pukekohe and Franklin, and \u201ca lot of scabies\u201d had been through the clinic. <\/p>\n
It wrote on Facebook that the symptoms often showed on people\u2019s hands, wrists, between their fingers or around the waistlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt spreads easily with close contact, school, daycare, sleepovers, sharing beds or towels, so it\u2019s really common for more than one person in a house to catch it,\u201d the clinic wrote. <\/p>\n
It advised people to visit their GPs rather than \u201cwaiting it out\u201d because scabies would not clear up on its own. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole household often needs treating at the same time, even if only one person has symptoms; that\u2019s what stops it bouncing straight back.\u201d<\/p>\n
People were also advised to wash bedding, towels and clothing in hot water on treatment day. <\/p>\n
When contracted, people typically develop an intensely itchy rash caused by tiny mites burrowing into the skin. Photo \/ 123RF<\/p>\n
Permethrin or A-Scabies insecticide cream is available over the counter from pharmacies, but people were encouraged to see a GP for an accurate diagnosis and get treatment prescribed.<\/p>\n
National Public Health Service chief public health clinical officer Maria Poynter said Health NZ recognised that scabies caused \u201creal difficulties\u201d for some communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cScabies is not a notifiable disease, so we do not have national case numbers, but we are hearing that it is a concern in some places.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said Health NZ had worked with Pharmac to make permethrin more available at a lower cost, and had updated HealthEd resources to help the public prevent reinfection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some symptoms of the contagious condition include itching that is often worse at night, small red bumps or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2840,806,2512,27056,71,134,527,2514,76,111,139,529,69,17711,42371,2994,766,242960,4062,6649,1515,78776,210,33210],"class_list":["post-552463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-across","tag-as","tag-cases","tag-clinic","tag-from","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-island","tag-issue","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-parts","tag-prompting","tag-providers","tag-reports","tag-scabies","tag-school","tag-schools","tag-surge","tag-surging","tag-through","tag-warnings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}