By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

EDUCATION Director Lionel Sands expects classes at schools affected by a recent scabies outbreak to return to normal today.

“We expect school to be in as normal as we’ve done everything that we were required to do,” he said yesterday.

Seven students were confirmed to have contracted the disease following a scabies scare at DW Davis Junior, TA Thompson Senior, TG Glover Primary and Woodcock Primary schools.

Two thousand students from those four schools were tested for the disease in the last week.

Mr Sands expressed satisfaction with public health officials for their handling of the matter. “I am extremely satisfied with public health officials because they’ve done a tremendous job in testing close to 2,000 students and they did all of it in a week,” he said. 

He again stressed that the outbreak did not occur in the schools, but emerged from within surrounding communities.

“The outbreak was caused by students coming to the school and is not something that is in the schools,” Mr Sands said. “A doctor said he was surprised by the outbreak and that it is a result of extreme poverty. It shows that for some, the level of hygiene is a little low and unless we change that, there is nothing we could do to stop it from occurring.

“We will have to continue to be vigilant and identify any child who has it and once we do that, we have to let professionals deal with them in terms of treating them and speaking to the parents in order to see how parents could be more responsible.”

Mr Sands said the outbreak was the first to occur in some time. “It’s the first time it has happened in a while,” he said. “Our health system has been such where we have been able to prevent a lot of things from happening because of what is done throughout the public school system, booster shots and the like.

“That’s why a doctor said he was very surprised to find this in the school. This is about exercising good hygiene and we expected everyone to be able to do that.”

Mr Sands said he is concerned about the time some of the students have had off while officials tried to get the problem under control. In particular, classes at DW Davis were disrupted for nearly a week because of the disease.

“If you miss classes for a minute that’s too much for us,” he said. “There is a concern that they had to miss classes. We try to make up by utilising breaks and sometimes after-school classes so they can catch up. Teachers were very understanding about the situation and the union was as well, since they all recognise that we live in a community and are affected by what happens throughout. The union usually has a difficulty when they feel the ministry didn’t do what it was supposed to do, but that was not the case here. It’s an illness.”