With the opening of classes last week, universities and colleges in Eastern Province are taking extra preventive measures to secure the health and safety of their students, many of them coming from nearby Gulf states and other countries. The focus is on swine flu prevention. King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) and King Faisal University (KFU) are taking the lead in the information and prevention drive, which will continue up to the submission of final grade next month, the opening of classes by the first week of December, and onward. KFUPM in Dhahran has already circulated comprehensive guidelines within its campus and has produced videos. King Faisal University (KFU), which has two compuses, one in Dammam and Al-Ahsa, has also come out with full informative brochures and video presentation in cooperation with the King Fahd University Hospital, a government hospital run by the university. “The classes are now ongoing since last week; the information on the prevention and how to deal with swine flu, have been circulated and posted in the university website. Although these drives are intended primarily for our students, faculty members and staffs, we have widened the campaign to members of other communities,” said Dr. Ghazi Hamadeh, head of KFUPM Medical Center. “We have to extend our information drive and prevention because KFUPM is a big community; the entire university has human resources of about 20,000, including some 2,000 professors, over 8,000 students, and families and dependents,” Hamadeh said. The KFUPM info drive on swine flu explained that it is a viral infection caused by a mixture of genes for the three flu viruses (human, birds & pigs) and preventable. The wearing of mask, as commonly perceived, is not necessary unless a person is sick and want to prevent spread the disease to others. The KFUPM health drive was also held at the university community colleges in Dammam and Hafr Al-Batin. KFUPM also has an advisory body which advises the university rector on health, safety and security measures, which is headed by Prof. Mohammad Al-Habboubi. King Faisal University, which has over 50,000 male and female students in its Dammam campus and over 27,000 in its Al-Ahsa campus, has started the biggest health drive focused on HINI information and prevention, according to Dr. Ahmed Al-Kuwaiti, KFU's supervisor general on public relations and information. – SG He said the drive is continuing in all KFU campuses and colleges of the university. “KFU has made it a rule that students should be confined within their respective colleges only, which means that students enrolled in the college of medicine, for example, are to move and pursue their studies only within their college. There are also regulations on the use of facilities in order to achieve optimum prevention,” Al
