Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
friday, october 13, 2017
Seychelles primary and secondary schools were shut down from Friday toTuesday, on government orders following the discovery of two suspected cases of plague, a disease that plagues the neighboring island of Madagascar.
"We made this decision as a precautionary measure to reassure parents," Marida Delcy, an adviser with the Ministry of National Education of the archipelago told AFP.
"We hope that on their return (...) children will be healthy," she added. A general panic seized the parents after students had a fever.
Preliminary tests involving two people, including a Seychellois who returned to his country on 6 October on a flight from Madagascar, showed they could have plague, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
"For the time being, it has not yet been confirmed that the two sick people are due to the plague, samples must be sent this weekend to the Institut Pasteur (in Paris)," said Dr. Jude Gedeon , Commissioner for Public Health.
The results should be known next week. According to the Ministry of Health, 320 people were placed under surveillance after being in contact with both patients.
In total, 12 people with possible symptoms of plague were admitted to the hospital and placed on antibiotics, the ministry said.
Among them is a child who may have been in contact with other students at Anse Boileau Elementary School on the west coast of the main island of Mahe. As a precaution, all the students also put under antibiotics.
Fear wins the population. In some shops and utilities, people started putting on masks. Pharmacies are out of stock of these items.
The Seychelles authorities also decided that anyone who had arrived less than seven days from Madagascar, located about 1,800 km to the south, was to be placed in a solitary confinement center.
By the end of September, a Seychellois basketball coach had died of pulmonary plague at a hospital in Antananarivo, the Malagasy capital.