Abstract
Louseborne relapsing fever (LBRF) was once a cosmopolitan disease, but it now occurs only in the Horn of Africa. Recent cases in refugees to Europe made LBRF topical again. Crowded boarding houses and church dwellings in Ethiopia are analogous to the crowded air-raid shelters of World War II. Thus, we might learn from experiments the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine conducted during World War II. When the vector of Borrelia recurrentis (Pediculus humanus lice) was held away from the host for 10 days, 100% of nymphal and adult lice starved to death and 100% of eggs did not hatch. We hypothesize that holding infested clothes away from hosts in plastic shopping bags will kill enough lice to control LBRF in Ethiopia. Owning 2 sets of clothes might be useful; 1 set might be held in a plastic shopping bag for 10 days to kill lice and their eggs.
Highlights
Louseborne relapsing fever (LBRF) was once a cosmopolitan disease, but it occurs only in the Horn of Africa
Louseborne relapsing fever (LBRF), which is caused by the spirochete Borrelia recurrentis, once had a cosmopolitan distribution but is endemic only to countries in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia) [1,2]
LBRF is a substantial burden on the healthcare system and, a cause of substantial illness and death, especially in day laborers, street children, and yekolotemaries in cities such as Bahir Dah in the Amhara Region of the highlands of Ethiopia
Summary
Killing Clothes Lice by Holding Infested Clothes Away from Hosts for 10 Days to Control. We hypothesize that holding infested clothes away from hosts in plastic shopping bags will kill enough lice to control LBRF in Ethiopia. LBRF has been eradicated from all regions of the world, except the Horn of Africa, by activities that kill clothes lice (Pediculus humanus), which have been referred to as body lice. Some of these activities have been organized public health interventions in communities, including mass delousing by steaming infested clothes with Stammers Serbian barrels, which were developed during World War I [26], and are still used today in Ethiopia (Figure 1) and elsewhere. Immersion of clothes in water heated to 60°C by a charcoal or wood fire is costly and time-consuming for most persons in Ethiopia
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