Influenza A H1N1 ruins school life, period!!

It’s been weeks since we first heard of the Influenza A H1N1 outbreak in Mexico, and now, even the Philippines became one of the countries affected by the virus, with over 700 cases being tallied by the Department of Health. Despite having most of them healed, and with new vaccine discovered and soon to be tested, the illness was still considered a hazardous threat to us Filipinos.

Believe me if I say that it ruins our lifestyle, especially when it comes to school. Some of our prestigious colleges & universities have their classes suspended for a maximum of 10 days due to confirmed cases of students being affected by the disease, especially those who were foreigners & even Filipinos who went to other countries for their summer vacation. It was a sad thing to say that the number of schools having suspended classes increased as time passes by.

Due to this quirky phenomenon, certain safety measures were sternly observed, like washing of hands using soap & water, using rubbing alcohol to clean our hands before & after our routine, sick students, teachers & employees wearing face masks & even the stationing of quarantine rooms for those found to be sick with flu. Even school clinics were providing flu vaccine for protection, but the price was so expensive that it may lead people to break their piggy banks just for the sake of being immune to the disease. Even schools have to give way to thorough cleaning, fuming & disinfecting, which was certainly another reason why classes have to be suspended.

So now here I go, as a student, going to endure 3 days of no classes, starting tomorrow until Monday, since my school will undergo thorough disinfection stage in order to be protected against swine flu. Because of this, the National Career Assessment Examination review session, which was supposed to start tomorrow, was postponed to next Saturday. Even I was pissed when DepEd announced that there will be no semestral break and that Christmas vacation will be cut short, just for the sake of completing the required school days. Grrrr!!!! I hate it when my school will be affected by these new guidelines, too.

I therefore conclude that all these happened because of that freaking swine flu outbreak. What a sad, tragic chapter that will be included in the pages of every student’s life, including mine… T_T