Swine Flu and other factoids

On June15th, the Guatemalan government announced that all schools would be closing until July 1st due to the increased concern about Swine Flu. Buena Vista, a community that we serve every week, closed a few days earlier because of a several confirmed cases in a nearby town. If I understand correctly, the schools typically have a 1 week break in June, so the break was simply extended.

Unfortunately, the kids in our scholarship program were sent home with the same amount of homework that they would have had if they were in school. Obviously, the glaring problem is that in many cases the children weren't in class to learn the main concepts. So I guess it's a good thing that we have "reinforcement" (tutoring) on Mondays and Fridays which are led by Oscar and Ruth.

According to the June 29th report from the WHO (World Health Organization), 254 people in Guatemala have been confirmed to have Swine Flu and 2 have died. Over the weekend, I received an email from my missionary friend Britney in El Salvador. Their schools are now being closed as well due to the Swine Flu. Today's WHO report shows that El Sal has 226 positive cases but no deaths thus far.

For comparison's sake, the same report shows the USA to have 227,717 confirmed cases and 127 dead. Guatemala has roughly the same # of square miles as Virginia (my home) and almost double the population. According to the Virginia Health Dept. report for June 29th, Virginia has 249 confirmed cases. Of course, Guatemala doesn't even remotely have the same medical access or quality of care...so numbers don't tell the whole story. Per Wikipedia, the median income for Virginians is $59,562, and median income for Guatemalans is between $2,800 and $4,800.