Schools to remain closed after 4th Oct?

any news of extention of schools...............

Schools reopening tomorrow

Schools are set to reopen tomorrow after a week’s delay which was ordered as a precautionary step against the spread of H1N1 flu

By Anwar Elshamy

Staff Reporter

The Supreme Council of Health has confirmed that all schools in the country will reopen tomorrow, even as a senior official highlighted the WHO recommendation for closure of any school with more than 1% of students infected with the H1N1 swine flu.

The reopening of schools, originally scheduled last Sunday, was delayed by a week as a precaution measure against the spread of swine flu upon an order from Minister of Education and Higher Education and secretary general of Supreme Education Council HE Saad bin Ibrahim al-Mahmoud.

“The decision to close any school in case of 1% confirmed swine flu cases, will be subject to an assessment by health teams,” Public Health director Dr Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani said yesterday.

The official told Qatar News Agency that the first consignment of the H1N1 vaccine will be received by the end of October and the delivery of the full order for 2mn vaccine units is expected to be complete in December.

Dr Mohamed al-Thani also allayed fears over the side effects of swine flu vaccine, saying that no scientific evidence showed H1N1 vaccine had caused any health concerns.

“We will not import or use any vaccine before it is certified by the International Medical Informatics Association to ensure that it the vaccine is safe and successfully tested,” he said.

“The first report of the IMIA says that the vaccine is strengthening one’s immunity to the swine flu virus. We are waiting for the second report which will decide whether the vaccine is safe and effective,” he stated.

The official also indicated that the H1N1 vaccine inoculation does not contradict with the planned seasonal flu shots, saying the mass vaccination against seasonal flu, which is expected to begin with the school reopening, will be optional for students, but mandatory for Haj pilgrims.

He reassured that the situation was stable in Qatar compared with several other countries, saying that only the three swine flue deaths reported in Qatar so far was a very low figure.

He added that the SCH would take part in the WHO regional Middle East office meeting, scheduled to be held in Morocco on Monday, which will review the situation of the swine flu spread in the region as well as the safety of the vaccine protecting from the virus.

Meanwhile, QNA reported that Qatar had received 280,000 doses of seasonal flu vaccine on Thursday and students will receive them starting from the last two days of the school week beginning tomorrow or early next week.

Dr Mohamed al-Thani said that forms were to be distributed to parents from tomorrow to obtain written approval for vaccinating their children.

The seasonal flu vaccine will help identify early symptoms of the H1N1 influenza and prevent serious complications.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=317970&version=1&template_id=57&parent_id=56

OH! MY GOD!

which means I have to work late tonite...bugger!!!

what...like at 3pm the day before they are supposed to go back??? Great stuff......not..

EXACTLY...Azilana................

just like last week...

mali................................... u pls wait 4 one more day

extension of school leave will only be announced on 3 rd october,

Is there any news?????

wait for another 24 hours and then comment

it might only be a rumour.BPS is opening on 4th oct09.

LoL .. no I was just kiddin. They aren't closing till December or next year :P .. As far as I know M.E.S Indian School is opening on the 4th of Oct.

We just received e-mail from the school (French School) confirming school will open as usual on the 4th..at last!

you know i was at work today and some of the parents were coming in with the kids to get the uniforms and you could tell the kids missed school a great deal. they were wanting to see their classes.

i really hope they go back to school on Sunday.

people need to stop being so paranoid. the fact of the matter is in most cases people have recovered from swine flu.

and even if they don't go school it doesn't mean they won't catch. they could catch from going out to city center or villagio. or any other public place.

The government should be proud of the professional way they handle this issue!! They are great in making wrong decisions.

"officially informed" that private schools could resume classes on Sunday. That means nothing for the indep/gov schools, I know, but for those of us with kids at private schools, I guess Sunday we're back on.

"Marriage is a wonderful institution...but who wants to live in an institution?" -- Groucho Marx

to decide on wether to allow schools to start on Sunday. That is what our school principal told us this morning.

I just heard from the Ministry of Ed that schools are to remain shut till this year end........

notnapster ,is that news is true...where you heard this???

$2003$

check the link posted above read it.important

If they really believe the H1N1 virus is deadly then the governments all over should encourage citizens to take the vaccine though even the WHO themselves say that they are not sure the vaccine will work....

if the virus is deadly then why just trust the vaccine to stop it one must then close down schools malls etc as a precaution....whats a few months deprived of these things compared to the safety of children/people....work can go on as adults can take of themselves as far as to avoid gettin contiminated.

In my opinion the H1N1 is as bad as normal seasonal flus in terms of the fatalities they cause....millions have contracted it and have been cured on their own without any medication.

What I fear is the vaccines that have NOT BEEN TESTED widely they have showed no side effects yet a month into testing but neither have they shown that it can avoid u gettin the virus....a month of testing is not my idea of comprehensive testing.

December, they'd have a mass exodus of families (if not entire households, breadwinners included), and that would have a serious effect on the economy here (not to mention everything else that the expat population basically runs -- universities, oil companies, etc.).

Nobody can afford to have their kids fall behind half a year. It would screw up their future education/applications to university in the fall...

I suspect if that DID occur, you'd find Embassies intervening to allow their national/private schools to be exempt from the ruling.

"Marriage is a wonderful institution...but who wants to live in an institution?" -- Groucho Marx

And there are schools with 43 students per class. I'm in one such school!

NUCLEAR ENERGY: IF AMERICA AND ISRAEL CAN HAVE THEM - THEN SO SHOULD IRAN.

IGNORE JACKFROST

"Recession is when your neighbour loses their job; depression is when you lose your job."

I just heard from the Ministry of Ed that schools are to remain shut till this year end and they are thinking about the possibility of including the next year too in their swine flu containing measures.

$2003$

please visit this site and the video fast.it wud get deleted soon.pleasee watch....

$2003$

guys it may happen that they may postpone due to these vaccine reasone theres one more thing that i want to share with you people..

c the video

very important please goto this website

http://www.infowars.com/baxter-to-develop-swine-flu-vaccine-despite-bird-flu-scandal/

also this 1

http://www.infowars.com/journalist-files-charges-against-who-and-un-for-bioterrorism-and-intent-to-commit-mass-murder/

I feel sorry for you Shellyjean that you are moving here to Doha! We are praying for the economy to improve so we can go back home....

Anyway, welcome to Doha....

On the bright side, as we are relocating to Qatar at the end of the month, my son will be that much less behind the other kids in the class. We think he will be out for about 2 weeks. This is working out ok for me, but school already goes so late into the summer, I am dreading the make up days (if they do that).

Hang on thats an excellent point, I know of a school whose actually has 32 student per class.

Shouldn't that be against the law? Plus in light of the pandemic won't it also help curb the spread not to mention decreasing the student numbers will definetly benefit in terms of quality focused teaching

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: IF AMERICA AND ISRAEL CAN HAVE THEM - THEN SO SHOULD IRAN.

2day I got SOME HOT RUMOURS...................................shall I share with u friends.....................................

1) Extension of school leave will only be announced on 3 rd of october

2) There won't be december vacation , that vacation willbe include in this,

i know in some schools they have up to 30 kids in a classroom.

No assemblies but its ok to have at least 20 or so students in one classroom together? Go figure?

Im against the H1N1 vaccine, I also think that this so called flu vaccine with parental consent is actually the H1N1 undercover. Ask yourself WHY this year the so called flu vaccine, they've never sent request forms home before. So to me, this is suspect.

As for the week or two or more off, as a parent & soon to be grandfather I would rather have my children loose a year off school than risk their lives in all this ambiguity.

I also think the H1N1 is lab made

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: IF AMERICA AND ISRAEL CAN HAVE THEM - THEN SO SHOULD IRAN.

The minister of education had a meeting with the heads of all qatar scools on tue 29th Sept.

He said that schools WILL OPEN on sunday 4th Oct but there will be some restrictions in place eg no assemblies or large groupings of children allowed.

I dont know what other restrictions were mentioned.

So as of yesterday it is official that schools will re-open on monday.

"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365

not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the

many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers

were given. Satan - 10."

Schools in Saudi have been told to remain closed until 10th October. There are rumours there of schools remaining closed until after Haj.

Many other Gulf countries have shut their school as well.

Let's hope schools will open as planned next Sunday otherwise many residents, myself included, may seek education outside of Qatar for our children.

I heard this rumor as well. I hope it's not true. I work as a TA and we have been in school with no kids for 3 weeks (first 2 weeks of September and then this week). They have been out of school way too long. I think some parents are a bit paranoid. Swine flu isn't as serious and a threat as people make it out to be. If you get proper treatment most people recover from it and are fine.

I think you are more likely to die in a car accident in this country than to die from swine flu.

i think schools will reopen again after for one more week, but there's no use of that

I am against the vaccines. I know a few kids that had health issues after taking them. And if the schools remain closed, I think the Ministry of Education are Kuku!!! I think they should open up their doors and the parents who are stupid can keep their kids at home until they are sure the classes are clean. Lame, !!

~*Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret*~

They have to secure parental permission to give it to children. And they can't ban from school kids whose parents refuse the vaccine -- so really what was this week off all about?

And I love the spin doctors at the SEC. First they said all schools were instructed to close for this week, but yesterday I read stories where they portrayed it as they merely "asked" schools that had already opened pre-Eid to close this week too.

Puleez...they forced this decision down everyone's throats, and now they're afraid to take the heat for it.

You can be confident of one thing: if they decide to close schools down for an even longer period, nobody will hear about it until Saturday morning at the earliest.

"Marriage is a wonderful institution...but who wants to live in an institution?" -- Groucho Marx

.... will be so SICK of having their kids at home they will send them to school no matter what their condition is. And that is the sad truth!

Well said zainbilgrami, but the schools are closed so just have to go with it. BUT when they do open I do hope parents keep their sick kids home!!!

If the vaccines will hav no effect on the H1N1 so as mentiones above by many ppl.... skools shud b open and any child who is havein the symptons of Swine flu shud stay in home ... there r parents 2 care bout this !!

-------------------------------------------------------

I'm a nobody, nobody is perfect, therefore I'm perfect!! !! .

Mrlucky - Am I suppose to understand what you are trying to say??

or at least Qatar!

I already concluded that the rumour of the schools staying closed 'till Dec was nonsense otherwise it will be back to bachelor land with wives and kids back to home countries!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8200504.stm

"Yet paradoxically the hard scientific evidence about the efficacy or dangers of these vaccines on pregnant women and young children does not exist.

"There is no study of the vaccines on pregnant women - no randomised clinical trials," said epidemiologist Tom Jefferson, who reviews influenza prevention and treatment for The Cochrane Collaboration, the voluntary global database provided by healthcare professionals which monitors the effects of healthcare worldwide.

No trials

He added: "Under the age of two there is only one trial and it shows inactivate vaccines [vaccines based on killed organisms] don't actually work."

Dr Jefferson said the best effect of influenza vaccines was on healthy adults.

A further problem, he explained, was that flu vaccines are unique in that they are registered and approved before full scale clinical trials have taken place.

Neither will the possible side effects be known on pregnant women or young children as Dr Marie Paul Kieny, director of vaccine research at the WHO explained. "It's not to say they would not be safe, they may be very safe but there is no data for the time being to demonstrate safety."

A vaccine that works, albeit not so well, is still better than no vaccine at all

Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at Bristol University is waiting for the go-ahead to commence a study the UK"

"We urgently need to get some evidence from children because young children, particularly under five, do seem to be at risk of serious illness," says Professor Finn.

"And secondly there is clear evidence that flu epidemics and pandemics are spread very efficiently by children. Children simply infect each other and their parents very efficiently and for that reason a hugely effective strategy to controlling epidemics of this kind is to immunise children

calculater......................................i think.......................u ..........calculate.............if ...........this.............happens.........u..should come back 2 me.....................

Where do you hear all these rumours mrlucky? or is it wishful thinking??

may b children get 10 more days.......................... hearing rumours everywhere now,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

im with u angelina no vaccine for my kids either....

what would this country be without rumours? many that turn out to be true, which is a worry.

Always a choice to say 'no' to the vaccine.

The vaccines are not safe. In Germany they called the mass vaccination an "experiment" with the population as guinea pig. Reminds some of the "euthanasia" programs of the NAZIS.

What would this forum do without rumours!!

I'm glad the vaccination isn't mandatory, theres no way I'm letting my 3 year old have an unresearched flu vaccine....no way Jose!!

mj..is that true??then i'm nt goin to school till they give up vaccinating..;-)

are worried,hope it will reopen

it has been mentioned in an article that people vaccinated by seasonal flu injections are more likely to catch swine flu.. maybe they should conduct further research before administering such actions..

not a good news :-(

for sufficient vacines by one senior health official

ya could be possible though ....

there is no H1N1 vaccine, it is not ready, they want to vaccine all kids and staff with the normal seasonal flu vaccine. Which I am guessing will have no effect on the H1N1 virus. I know I am a teacher

to keep away the students from recently attacked viruses.... many families are back from their homelands.... if any is affected ..... will be precure....till schools reopen!!! Safety First!!

as i heard....

question at hand, are these so-called vaccines proven safe?

get sufficient dosage for H1N1 vacines,we have read in papers they got sufficient stock and schools may not postpone further,already many working parents have problem to adjust.

Haven't heard of that yet.... The only thing I know is that, the schools will reopen on 4th Oct. unless otherwise declared...

Thats the rumour, we know as much as parents do. At the moment we are in school with no kids hoping that they are back next week

i hope it will remain as a rumour and that the school openings will push through on Oct 4 as we have been informed.. school has been delayed long enough..