20 new cases of HF&M disease, PTA Meeting should help says Ministry of Education 

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, November 23, 2022 – There have been at least 20 more cases of hand foot and mouth disease detected among TCI students since the last update from the Ministry of Health pushing the total to over 41 cases.  Despite, a countrywide PTA meeting has the Education Ministry feeling confident that with the help of parents it will be brought under control.

Magnetic Media spoke to Mark Garland, Deputy Director of Education.

“The Ministry of Health and Human services works closely with the Ministry of Education and from time to time— and so based on the information coming from the Department of Epidemiology they noticed that quite a number of students visited the hospital and were treated for hand foot and mouth disease. When a child is taken to the hospital for any particular reason if it’s a communicable disease it has to be reported,” he explained

Garland informed that protocol dictates that if the concerns were alarming, for example if a lot of children were turning up with a particular illness the Health Ministry would get the Education Ministry involved. He said the alert for Hand Foot and Mouth Disease had come in September.

“The ministry has made us aware that quite a number of students from the public and private school had been contracting Hand, Foot and Mouth and the numbers just kept on increasing and increasing.”

So the islandwide meeting was called and with the help of Nurse Savita Ramkalawom and Dr. Alicia Malcolm both from the Ministry of Health parents were guided on how to prevent the spread of all communicable diseases.

In addition to this parents and students were allowed to speak to representatives of the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Department as a response to the many murders that have been carried out in the country over the past few months

Describing it as killing two birds with one stone he said, “We believe that this increase in crime has impacted parents and children – we invited the Department so that they could share some of the services available to parents, children and the wider community as they attempt to cope with trauma, fear, depression, anger or any other negative emotion.”

When it comes to the communicable diseases in question, parents are reminded to keep sick children at home until they are cleared by a doctor as they could still be contagious