title: Outbreak: 10 tips to make scabies scamper.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Most nursing homes are aware of the pandemonium an outbreak of scabies can cause-the laundry alone occupies staff for days. Debilitated residents and those who have poor selfcare skills require considerable help with the activities associated with the eradication of Sarcoptes scabiei. How can a consultant pharmacist help?
  
  
  METHODS
  Consultant pharmacists should cultivate a "high index of suspicion" for scabies. Scabies mites live their entire lives on the human host as obligate parasites. They are able to survive elsewhere for only up to 48 hours, making transmission via fomite (blankets, towels, or any object that can transmit infectious agents) possible, but unlikely. Transmission follows close personal contact, and passing contact like handshaking is insufficient to pass the mites. Crowded living conditions, such as those associated with emergency shelters, and close and repeated contact, like that which occurs in classrooms, fuel cluster outbreaks.
authors.affiliation: National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethhesda, MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Jeannette Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Wick
authors.forename: Guido R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Zanni
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003157:Community Pharmacy Services; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008018:Life Cycle Stages; D008297:Male; D008925:Mites / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D009735:Nursing Homes; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D012532:Scabies / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000635:transmission*