A Government Information Service Release in Barbados is suggesting that a secondary school in the north of the island may have had its students exposed to tuberculosis. As a result health officials have heightened their state of alert and will be carrying out investigations.
The School was not identified.
However, the Ministry of Health confirmed the report in a press release posted on its Government Information Service website stating that investigators will be visiting the country school in an effort to resolve the problem.
That statement said: “The Ministry of Health is investigating the possibility that some students at a secondary school may have been exposed to a respiratory illness. Members of the public are advised that public health officials are conducting the necessary investigations and have put procedures in place to ensure the situation is well-managed.”
“Letters are being given to students to take home to their parents or guardians explaining the procedures to be followed. In addition, education officials, school administrators and teachers are being advised about the situation.”
Another School, the Louis Lynch Secondary School was recently in the news when seven years after its closure, the environmental problem that was alleged to have plagued the school years ago seems to have reared its head once again.
The Nation Newspaper of Barbados recently reported that there has been an “unusually high incidence of cancer deaths among former teachers and students”.
The report went on to say that since 2002, 20 former students have passed away from a number of cancers from leukaemia to cervical, stomach and brain cancers with five of these deaths occurring in the last year alone.
The report continued that two former teachers are alleged to have died from cancer as well.
Investigations continue. At the time of its closure Louis Lynch School was alleged to have had an asbestos problem among other environmental problems.
Further, nine teachers who once taught at Louis Lynch are said to have been diagnosed with cancer while others are suffering from acute respiratory illnesses. The Nation Newspaper says that former students are also battling other illnesses including kidney and liver disease, respiratory and neurological illnesses as well as cancer.
The Old Scholars of the school are so worried that they have called for a complete environmental study which has already been done on the school to be publicized and that further tests be carried out to determine whether there is a connection between the illnesses and death suffered to the environmental issues which once plagued the now closed school.
