Male sex workers
Scabies
What is scabies?
- Scabies or “the itch” is a contagious skin disease caused by a small animal: the scabies mite.
- The adult female digs superficial tunnels (maximum 1.5 cm long) in the skin in which it lays its eggs.
- You can see the tunnels mainly on your wrist and between your fingers.
What causes scabies?
- Infection is caused by long-lasting or regular, intensive skin contact with someone who has scabies.
- Sexual contact or the joint use of bed and clothing.
- Someone with scabies is contagious as long the mites in the skin can reproduce.
What are the complaints?
- One of the most important complaints in case of scabies is increasing itching as a result of an allergic reaction to the mite, the eggs and the faeces of the mite.
- The first time someone gets infected it takes 2 to 6 weeks before there are complaints. With the next infection itching returns after a few days because there is already an allergy for the scabies mite.
- The scabies mite prefers certain places on the body: the hand palms and the skin between the fingers, wrist, elbow, foot and genitalia.
- Itching can occur over the entire body and is often more serious at night when you are in bed and feel warm.
- On the skin you may see blisters, red bumps and scales.
- You can see the tunnels mainly on your wrist and between your fingers.
How is the infection diagnosed?
- Scabies is detected by examining the skin scales under the microscope and check for the presence of mites and eggs.
- It is not always necessary to find the presence of mite for the treatment. People with complaints that may point at scabies and/or may be infected by someone with scabies are often treated without visible evidence of the presence of mite.
Treatment
- Scabies can be treated well with a special cream that kills mites as well as eggs.
- Use it as mentioned on the information leaflet.
- Approximately 3 to 14 days after the treatment you are free of complaints and the skin infections are healed.
- Sometimes there are serious forms of scabies and these require a longer treatment.
Warning partners
- It is very important to treat your partner/children too, they may be infected, and it is important to wash the clothes and bed linen well.
Work advice
- Don’t work during the treatment, start working again after the complaints have disappeared.
- After the treatment you are no longer infectious.
