Add CategoryA four-year-old girl suffered from such severe head lice infestation, doctors were left “horrified”.
The little girl, who was admitted to a US hospital last month, was so sick she could barely walk with her 26-year-old mother Shyanna Nicole Singh, allegedly claiming she “didn’t notice the lice”.
The Indiana mum has since been arrested after police were notified by hospital staff about a four-year-old with a shocking case of lice.
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She needed four blood transfusions because the parasites had reportedly depleted the oxygen in her blood to dangerously low levels.
The hospital declared her “as a near fatality” due to her extremely low haemoglobin levels, according to the Lexington Herald Leader.
The Mayo Clinic explains haemoglobin to be a protein in your red blood cells that carries oxygen to your body’s organs and tissues and transports carbon dioxide from your organs and tissues back to your lungs.
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A normal haemoglobin level is 12 grams per deciliter, but the girl’s was recorded at just 1.7, police said.
The girl’s six-year-old sister was also infested with lice with a police officer saying it was unlike anything he had seen before.
While her haemoglobin levels were still low at 8.7 grams, it was not as critical as her younger sister’s, the publication reported.
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Interviews with school staff revealed eldest sister had had lice for three days straight in March before she was absent for 31 days.
The sisters have since been removed from their mother with child services placing them in the care and custody of their grandparents’.
The girls’ grandmother told police she asked Singh how the lice got so bad, and the mum responded that “she didn’t notice, and that (she) was just in a fog,” according to an affidavit.
It’s not the first time the sisters have suffered form lice after having got it in November last year.
Singh was allegedly “too lazy to help comb them out and it would start all over again”, the grandmother said in her testimony.
Singh has been charged with several counts of neglect, including neglect of a dependent, neglect of a dependent resulting in bodily injury, and neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury. She is due to make her first appearance in court on Friday.