‘It is shameful’: why the return of Victorian-era diseases to the UK alarms health experts

Ultraviolet light therapy being used to prevent rickets in children in 1938. Photograph: Alamy

Before Covid-19, Dr Farzana Hussain says, it was rare for her to see a case of scabies at her GP surgery in Newham, east London, but since the pandemic, the number of patients with the parasitic skin infection has increased dramatically.

“By the time a patient comes to me for advice, everyone in the family has it, including all the children,” she says. “The itch is maddening. People demand immediate treatment.”