Occurrence of Pediculosis in Pre-School Children and Parents’ Awareness of it Ave Kutman, Birgit Hüneva Abstract The aim of the research study was to find out the occurrence of head lice infestation in pre-school children and their parents’ awareness of the disease. At the end of 2019 and at the beginning of 2020, a web-based questionnaire was carried out in various internet environments. Parents’ awareness was explained by 20 statements. The study involved parents (n=1141) of pre-school children, the median age of respondents was 32.7 years. The survey included participants from all the counties in Estonian, the majority of respondents were from Tartu city and Tartu county. The results showed that pediculosis occurred in 30.9% of children studied. The parents, whose children had had pediculosis, used different medications; in 98.6% of the cases parents rated the chosen treatment as effective. Head lice were most common in children aged 4–6 years and the study also found that most of the children with pediculosis went regularly to the kindergarten or day care facility. The parents’ average awareness score was 13.2 out of 20 points per respondent. 1% of all the respondents knew all the statements correctly, 3.6% of respondents answered 10 statements correctly and 5 respondents or 0.4% of the whole sample did not have the correct answer to any of the statements. The subjects with medical education (n=130) had the highest level of awareness of head lice and pediculosis. The comparison of different levels of education
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