With an attendance rate of 90 percent, the Eastern Province elementary, intermediate, and high schools received over 230,000 students Saturday with no confirmed cases of swine flu, according to Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Muderes, regional Director General of the Ministry of Education in Eastern Province. Intermediate and high school students reported back to school last Saturday. “For the second week, the schools in the region opened without any health problem. Everything went just fine, thanks to the excellent precautionary measures taken by the Directorate of Education in the region to prevent swine flue,” Al-Muderes said. At least 40,000 swine flu posters will be put up across the EP schools. “Students will soon receive a health package of face mask, instruction leaflet, disinfectant liquid, and napkins,” he said. “There are about 900 schools in the Eastern Province, including 348 elementary schools, 230 intermediate schools, 150 high schools, and a number of post-secondary institutes. Foreign international schools in the region opened Saturday to receive their students with instruction from the Department of Foreign Education that they should provide complete instructions on health issues related to H1N1. The Indian International School in Dammam (IISD), which has the biggest student population of about 12,000, has made adequate preparations to educate its students on the swine flu virus. Other schools, including the Filipino schools which have combined population of about 2,500 students, also complied with the directive of the Department of Foreign Education regarding H1N1. In other regions of the Kingdom, education officials conducted field inspections to check on their schools' precautionary measures against swine flu and preparations for the new school year. Hail schools, however, were found to be lacking thermometers and essential preventive measures against swine flu, said the Control and Investigation Commission. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the preparatory week at Okaz Elementary School in Al-Sharaye'a, Makkah, Bakr Bin Ibrahim Basfar, head of the Boy's Education Department in the Makkah region, emphasized the importance of this preparatory week as it aims to help the child move out of the familiar family environment to the wider atmosphere of school life through a gradual, yet exciting educational method. Basfar checked swine flu preventive measures at the school and handed over welcome packages to first-graders. Officials at the Education and Health departments in Madina together toured their schools to check on the health situation of students. Jizan schools were instructed to notify the education department with their immediate needs to fight the swine flu virus for a smooth beginning of the new school year. A number of parents, however, have called for smaller classes and prevention of huge crowds at the school cafeterias during the morning break. “That would make the students vulnerable to the disease if even one student in the crowd had the flu,” one parent said. With the beginning of the school year, Jizan pharmacies were gradually running out of disinfectant liquid bottles in a sign of public awareness of the disease. Traffic police officers were seen distributing swine flu leaflets to the students on Jizan streets Saturday morning. – Okaz/SG Talal Al-Raddadi, Majid Aqili, Eftikhar Bahufain and Sami Al-Maghamsi contributed to the report. __
