Three more Transkei schools were affected by apparent outbreaks of mass hysteria on Wednesday. Scores of pupils, most of them girls, from two Mthatha schools were taken to hospital on Tuesday after they complained of headaches and collapsed.
However East Cape health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said they were all discharged the same day. Doctors had been unable to find any clinical signs of illness.
On Wednesday morning 65 children from two more schools were taken to Mthatha General for check-ups after exhibiting similar symptoms. Ambulances were also being sent to fetch about 90 children from the rural Takata Junior Secondary School in the Ngqeleni area.
Some schools in the Western Cape have reported cases of swine flu among pupils, and a private school in Cape Town shut down for two days last week in an attempt to get general winter flu infections under control.
Kupelo said there had to date been no confirmed case of swine flu in the Transkei. "It [the problems at schools] has nothing to do with swine flu. It's something else," he said. He said the schools themselves had not raised the issue of swine flu when reporting the incidents. "There's just confusion," he said.
Takata principal Nommiselo Makiva said most of the children affected at her school were girls. "They are coughing, they have got severe headaches with red eyes," she said. She had sent 12 pupils home, but by mid-morning 73 more were exhibiting the symptoms.
"We never experienced this before," she said. "Never such a big number, all coughing, with headaches". Parents who had come to fetch their children had said they were scared of "this fever [swine flu]"."They say they don't have money to take their children to the clinic or hospital," Makiva said. "We don't know the symptoms."
Issued by: Department of Health, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
13 August 2009
Source: Department of Health, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
(http://www.ecdoh.gov.za)
