The prevalence of scabies in Monrovia, Liberia: A population-based survey.

Scabies is known to be a public health problem in many settings but the majority of recent data is from rural settings in the Pacific. There is a need for high quality data from sub-Saharan Africa and peri-urban settings to inform scale up of scabies control efforts. There have been anecdotal reports of scabies being a public health problem in Liberia but robust data are lacking.

A community-based validation of the International Alliance for the Control of Scabies Consensus Criteria by expert and non-expert examiners in Liberia.

Background: The International Alliance for the Control of Scabies (IACS) recently published expert consensus criteria for scabies diagnosis. Formal validation of these criteria is needed to guide implementation. We conducted a study to provide detailed description of the morphology and distribution of scabies lesions as assessed by dermatologists and validate the IACS criteria for diagnosis by both expert and non-expert examiners.