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Brief Report: An Outbreak of Scabies Among Employees in a Hospital-associated Commercial Laundry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Michelle C. Thomas ,
Dale H. Giedinghagen  and
Gerald L. Hoff
Michelle C. Thomas*
Affiliation:
Division of Communicable Disease Control, Kansas City, Missouri Health Department
Dale H. Giedinghagen
Affiliation:
Division of Communicable Disease Control, Kansas City, Missouri Health Department
Gerald L. Hoff
Affiliation:
Division of Communicable Disease Control, Kansas City, Missouri Health Department
*
Kansas City, Missouri Health Department, 1423 E. Linwood, Kansas City, MO 64109
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Extract

The acquisition of scabies in either the community or the health care setting is not uncommon, although it is infrequently documented. In Missouri, individual cases of scabies infestation are not reportable, but outbreak notification is required. Outside of the nursing home environment, where three to six outbreaks of scabies per year require assistance from the nosocomial disease subprogram of the Kansas City Health Department, only two other outbreaks have been recorded in the community since August 1977. One involved a school with 93 cases and the other a commercial laundry, which is reported here. The latter outbreak illustrates the difficulty encountered when attempting to classify an outbreak as either nosocomially acquired or community-acquired.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 8 , Issue 10 , October 1987 , pp. 427 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1987

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