Scabies on a Viking Line Cruise Boat

Aftonbladet reports of the scabies on Viking Cinderella cruise boat, where twenty crew members have been infected with the small parasite. Scabies spreads readily, causes great discomfort and itching in patients, and requires medical attention. Incubation period for the bug can be several weeks, so it is not possible as yet to determine how widely the parasite has spread.

Viking Line is a listed company whose margins have been shrinking in recent years. Intense competition between the various ferry lines crisscrossing the Baltic has made headlines several times over the past few years.

Not sure, but this begs the question, is scabies spreading because the boats are being improperly cleaned due to cost cutting?

Generally speaking, the trouble is that as margins tighten, cruise lines must cut their costs somehow, and cleaning services are often the first that get cut and squeezed, presumably not least because maintenance isn't revenue-producing and the obvious effects of reducing resources in maintenance do not show in the short term. It's easy to cut something that doesn't add to your bottom line. But as always, sweeping a problem under the rug and pretending it doesn't exist won't work for long.

The maintenance industry illustrates many other potentially problematic issues. Labor rights are relatively weak for part-time janitors, and the work is seen as low prestige. Oftentimes the jobs are held by minorities, creating a complex mix of issues around a low-status job becoming associated with a certain economic or social group or class. Turnover is high, training is seldom thorough, employee commitment to the job tends to be low, and workers may become demoralized due to their status, low pay, and the pressure of having to get the job done in the shortest possible length of time. Major problems that are brewing may be obvious to insiders, but only surface in the media when the symptoms become too obvious to cover up.

The only problem is, this industry is far from insignificant. Keeping places like cruise boats clean is obviously essential for ensuring passenger safety and eradicating health risks, considering the total number of passengers residing in the same quarters month after month. As black and white as it may sound, it seems on some level to be about trade-offs between financial results (for investors who may not use cruise ships anyway) and the conditions provided for the people who actually work and travel on these boats and sleep in the bunks.

I'm just wondering: now that privatization and outsourcing are popular, what will happen if hospitals, schools, nursing homes and daycare centers start outsourcing maintenance services? Will patient, elderly, student or child health be at risk?

Viking Line outsourced its cleaning services to SOL Siivouspalvelut, a local cleaning services provider, several years ago. The only real news available on the internet was a broken link to a SOL press release, but the employees who do the cleaning on Viking Line ferries are employees of SOL -- many of them students, immigrants and (other) part-time workers.

What seems wholly unacceptable is the lack of transparency. According to Helsingin Sanomat, it took the Viking Line ferry company a month to report of the situation.

Scabies isn't life threatening, but it's an extreme annoyance. Whoever catches scabies needs to do a complete floor-to-ceiling clean-up in their primary residence and use a topical agent for several weeks to kill the infection in their body. Garments and all bedding must be washed thoroughly, lest one wants to keep getting reinfected.

In a healthcare setting, nurses protect themselves with disposable clothing from head to toe when working with patients who have scabies. I just wonder what kind of protective equipment the cleaning staff on Viking Cinderella are wearing, and how Viking reimburses its employees for the discomfort and hassle of being infected.