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Millions return to school in Mexico

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-08 10:05

Government-mandated "filter" teams, composed of parent volunteers and school officials, will check the returning students for any respiratory ailments.

Two students wearing surgical masks talk at a university after it was reopened, in Mexico City May 7, 2009. [Xinhua]

"If the least suspicion exists, the boy or girl can't remain and the Health Department will be notified," Cecilia Landerreche Gomez Morin, director-general of Mexico's Family Welfare Agency, announced Wednesday.

The government also created an online manual, "What to do to restart classes without risk?"

Related readings:  Mexico gets back to normal; virus spreads in Europe  Mexico City lets all businesses reopen Thursday  98 Chinese return from Mexico  2nd swine flu death in Texas; Mexico set to reopen

It calls for parents and school employees to clean classrooms, cafeterias and other areas with water, soap and chlorine, and to provide running water for hand-washing.

Each school, Mexican officials said, must be cleaned and inspected this week. Complicating the task: Many schools are primitive buildings with dirt floors and lack proper bathrooms. It was unclear how students attending those schools, especially in outlying regions of the country, could adhere to the government's strict sanitary conditions.

The government promised detergent, chlorine, trash bags, anti-bacterial soap or antiseptic gel and face masks to state governments for delivery to public schools. But some local districts apparently didn't get the word.

Guillermo Narro Garza, acting secretary of education for Ciudad Juarez, along the border with Texas, said only chlorine would be used - and that parents have to supply it.

"We're trying to follow what's happening through newspapers and radio," said an administrator of a school in San Miguel Topilejo.

Mexico's public education department said students must complete the yearly requirement of 800 hours in class, but did not say if the term would be extended because of the shutdown.

U.S. health officials are no longer recommending that schools close because of suspected swine flu cases since the virus has turned out to be milder than initially feared. But many U.S. schools have done so anyway, including the school of the Texas teacher who just died.

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