Scabies at the Care Home

We had this problem about 18 months ago.. Dad caught it while in respite. As it can take up to 6 weeks for the rash to appear, it's hard to pin down, but he hadn't been anywhere else, so it must have been there. We got him clear of that after a few weeks and his skin healed.

Then he went into the same home for respite again, a few days after he came home it all started again.

In all it took 4 treatments of Permethrin with no improvement before I had his own doctor out (they kept sending out the non-english speakers before) and I broke down in tears, I was exhausted with washing and cleaning.

He prescribed Derbac-M.. he said to stop all the cleaning, don't bother to treat yourself, if you've not caught it by now, you won't get it.

Derbac-M worked.. it took a long time to get dad's skin right and we applied Double Base every day for weeks. I think he had caught a resistant strain of scabies, which Permethrin couldn't kill.

All this took months of constant care.. and I mean MONTHS and MONTHS.. I do wish you all the luck with this, it's a nightmare.

The problem with dementia sufferers is this.. they don't know to stop scratching, they tear their bodies to shreds until it's a bloody mess no matter how short you cut their nails