“Flu-like symptoms” are appearing all across Belize –
and the Swine Flu scare is in full effect – but the Ministry of Health’s
advice is that there’s really no need for alarm: health authorities tell
us that the H1N1 is here – as it is everywhere else - and it will spread,
but it’s a mild flu that lasts three to five days. Their efforts now are
focused on managing it, basically limiting the speed of the spread. And nowhere
is it spreading faster than in schools. All across Belize we’re hearing
reports of dozens of school children showing flu like symptoms causing mass
absences.
And that’s what the Ministry of Health was gearing up for today.
The Director of Health Services, Dr. Michael Pitts held a meeting with all his
regional managers and representatives of the Ministry of Education to discuss
a mutual strategy for managing H1N1 in Belize’s education system.
Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Health Services
“In addition we have included a representative from the Ministry of
Education so that we could bring them onboard to enforce what we were doing
with the educational system. The reason for that is that most of the cases that
we are seeing are within the school system. And with the managers, basically
we had two fundamental approach that we had to re-enforce: the community response 
approach and then the health care treatment approach. In Belize District what
we were looking at, the major schools that we thought would have problems so
we’re doing some surveillance activities. Since last night what we decided
is that we will send teams to those schools and carry kits, treatment kits,
to the schools; identify the students at school and give them treatment right
there so a nurse and doctor would go to most of the schools and give treatment
where possible.
What we have are reports from the teachers in those schools. When we send
in our technical team to look at, while they may report to say they have an
occurrence on one day, when we go in and look at those numbers, the numbers
are spread over a wider period. In fact when we interviewed, we would find that
instead of 90 on one day, the 90 cases might have been spread over five or six
days. So the true number on any given day might have been ten or fifteen. We
had looked at Saint Catherine’s and their numbers have stabilized. We
look at St. Ignatius and St. Ignatius’ numbers are stabilized. Crooked
Tree, we are still trying to get the details but already the regional manager
from central is saying that similarly, when they reported 33 cases out of 139
students or there about, the 33 cases were spread over about 5 days again.”
Jules Vasquez,
“And in the opinion of the Health Department, that is manageable?”
Dr. Michael Pitts,
“That is manageable. Those are manageable. What was happening in Caye
Caulker High School for example was less manageable; that was like 33 students.
In Sacred Heart I think what had happened is that there they reported maybe
about 150 students within two days and so we say that was approaching something
similar to Caye Caulker so we said to let’s close that school and interrupt
this thing there.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Let’s talk about the three results we’ve gotten back from
Caye Caulker. You told me one was positive for H1N1 and two others were positive
for other types of influenza. So that means we have s co-mingling or a co-visitation
of two types of influenza simultaneously.”
Dr. Michael Pitts,
“Yes and this is what even with the earlier outbreak in April-May.
When we did our testing while we had 33 positive for H1N1, we found about four
other viruses circulating at that time also. Another type of influenza A, we
had some influenza B, and other viruses; so different groups. Now fast forward
to now we have the regular flu season so we believe those viruses are still
circulating in addition to H1N1.”
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