H1N1

All the teachers at our school had to go to a meeting today in town about the school closings and the flu scare. The Mexican government and school officials did a two hour presentation about the latest concerning the H1N1 situation here in Cabo. My Mexican team-mate Patty is very critical of what she considers the dishonesty and government incompetence that is rampant here having had experience with H1N1 in her family. Her 6 year old grandson was diagnosed two weeks ago with H1N1 and was one of the lucky ones to get treatment. Patty says the reason he was treated is because her daughter is good friends with a doctor here in town. Her grandson's blood sample was sent to the mainland because of the doctor's intervention. He got the diagnosis and the drug. There are no lab facilities here that can do the analysis required to identify the virus properly. Plus there is a shortage of tamiflu. Patty told a story of her daughter's friend who went very ill to the hospital last week with her sick child. The hospital said they could only give her medication for one of them and she would have to decide who would get the drug. (And we think we have heath care problems in our country?)

There have been 58 cases of H1N1 here in San Jose so far with 12 deaths. We were told the government has purchased a shipment of 20 million flu shots coming from China in December. Mexico's population is 120 million. Nothing was said about the US selling vaccine or flu shots to Mexico. Teachers from the public schools voiced their concerns about poor parents not being able to afford to stay home from work to care for their sick children. Sick leave is not a reality here for most people. If you don't show up you do not get paid. Patty says the vaccine and flu shots will go to the wealthy and well connected first and anything left over will be distributed to those not as fortunate. Harry took our good camera to England so the quality of the photo I took at the meeting today is poor.