By Conan Businge

THE Government has instructed boarding schools across the country not to allow students to go home until the term closes in a bid to stop the spread of swine flu.

Granting students permission to go home should only be “for very special cases,” according to the Minister for Higher Education, Mwesigwa Rukutana.

“We do not expect any student in a boarding school to go home. Schools are highly populated communities. If any student gets in contact with an infected person, the virus can spread fast.”

The minister said the directive would be passed on to all boarding schools. However, by press time the circular had not reached many schools.

The Commissioner for Secondary Education, John Agaba, said the ministry was working together with the health ministry to contain the spread of the virus, which has hit three schools.

“There should be no cause for alarm. The situation will not escalate. The health teams in the affected schools will handle the situation,” he said.

The measure comes a few days after 13 students of Ndejje SS in Luwero were confirmed to have contracted swine flu.

It became the third school to be affected in one month. The other two are Katabi Seminary in Bushenyi, where nine students tested positive and Nyakasura School in Kabarole, where seven were positive.

When The New Vision visited Ndejje SS yesterday morning, studies were going on normally.
Head teacher Elijjah Kiyingi said the situation was under control.
The isolated students, who were confined to the school’s sickbay, were reading books on the verandah.

However, there were no tight restrictions on access to the isolation ward. Students were exchanging books through the fence. No visitors were allowed into the school premises. There has been an increase in the number of swine flu cases in the region.

In Uganda, at least 33 cases have been confirmed, mainly in the western district of Bushenyi.
The first case, a British visitor, was confirmed on July 2. Two days earlier, the first case was reported in Kenya, a visiting British student.

Some 350 swine flu cases have been confirmed in Kenya since, according to health officials.
No deaths have been reported.
By the end of September, 24 countries in Africa had registered 12,018 laboratory-confirmed swine flu cases, including 58 deaths, according to a World Health Organisation update.

South Africa was leading with 11,253 cases and 47 deaths. Tanzania had 143 cases and Ethiopia four.

Paul Garwood, the WHO communications officer, told IRIN that control measures were ongoing. Vaccines would also be sent to developing countries. Initially, about 300 million doses of vaccine will be distributed to more than 90 countries, he said.

Worldwide, about 300,000 swine flu cases had been confirmed in 191 countries by September 20.
A total of 3,917 people have died of the virus.