fourth elementary school in Jeddah has several cases of scabies among students and affiliates on a large scale. The school principal and several teachers revealed that they were communicating with four ministries to remove the swamps, dirt, and old cars that surround the school but there has been no sufficient response. The number of infected increased to 9 cases, lately. "The school communicated three weeks ago with the concerned authorities to remove the swamps, dirt, and old cars which surrounds the school premises after the first suspected case of the disease, but no one responded throughout that period. Today, we got some actual responses only after the teachers started tweeting about the issue online," the school principal was quoted by Al-Madina newspaper as saying. A fifth grade teacher said that on the day of vaccination of students, the nurse noticed redness of the skin on the shoulder of one of the students, and then told her teacher that the student must visit the health center to verify this type of rash. After being transferred from the school to the health center, diagnostic results showed positive for scabies, and then began to spread the infection among female students. Teachers demanded the Ministry of Education to close the school temporarily and hire a company to sterilize and clean the premises and give students a chance to recover. Hammoud Al-Squiran, media director and spokesman for the education of Jeddah, confirmed that school conducts annual check-ups to ensure safety of students and that there were only seven cases in the school that have been dealt with. He added that all the confirmed cases were prevented from entering the school for two weeks to be sure that they are medically cured in order to avoid transmission through human interaction. He pointed out that there is no need to evacuate the school building or carry out sterilization because the incidents came through direct contact between an infected person and the students. One physician confirmed that the treatment of scabies is very easy with the evolution of medicine. A treatment ointment, which is distributed by the ministry, kills the virus within 8 to 14 hours and the infected person does not require a sick leave or even absence from school.
