Three school staff contract scabies

A teacher and two facilitators working at a Floriana school have contracted scabies, a highly contagious skin condition which has also affected up to nine schoolchildren.

This was confirmed by the Education Division, which said no new infections among children have been reported since Friday, when the cases were discovered at Prof Kurunell Lorenzo Manchè Boys' School. The school was "disinfested" over the weekend and is being monitored by the Education Division's health and safety unit, a division spokesman said.

One of the facilitators told The Times that she and her colleagues had been complaining of a rash for some days. The alarm bells started ringing when an 11-year-old student also mentioned itching.

The facilitator, who did not wish to be named, spoke to the other affected staff members and immediately raised the alarm with the head of school.

She said the affected staff members and children were isolated in a room until a doctor confirmed they had scabies. She complained that despite the doctor's suggestion that they should go home, the head asked them to stay with the children until all had been picked up.

"We had no objection to staying for a short while, but not for three hours. We were all on tenterhooks to buy the prescribed treatment and to get home to apply it," she said.

An Education Division spokesman denied that the affected teachers were not allowed to leave the school, saying they left at around 12.30 p.m., some two hours after the health officials had arrived.

Scabies is caused by a tiny mite - less than a millimetre long - that burrows into the skin and produces an intense and itchy rash. It can be passed easily through close contact or infected bed linen.

Lawrence Scerri, the head of Sir Paul Boffa's Dermatology Department, pointed out that the scabies mite does not survive for more than a few minutes outside the human body, and therefore fumigation was not necessary.

Disease Surveillance Unit head Charmaine Gauci said occasional cases were found in Malta, but the condition was not very common.