School Nurses on Frontlines of Swine Flu

School nurses are finding their offices increasingly busy as swine flu continues to sweep across Mississippi. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports on what those nurses are doing to contain the virus.

It’s lunchtime and assistant principle Terry Breeland is standing in the middle of the Ocean Springs High School cafeteria,

“We have hand sanitizers in every classroom, we have them just about everywhere you can think of to put them. When you have 1700 kids there is a lot of traffic going in and out.”

Those types of precautions are common in schools all across the state in an attempt to stave off the H1N1 virus or swine flu, which is more prone to infect those under 18. Mary LaSalle is the school nurse coordinator for the Ocean Springs School District,

“School nurses are at the front line of this H1N1 flu season, we are the ones that are detecting them.”

With the swine flu vaccine not expected to become available until the middle of October, LaSalle says they are doing the best they can to prevent the spread of the virus. By monitoring children closely who are not feeling well and getting parents to take their children to a doctor for swine flu testing if they come down with a fever at school. Rick Bosarge, manages 14 school clinics for Memorial Hospital along the Coast, he says they have seen the numbers in the clinics rise dramatically but on site labs are helping contain the virus,

“So here within the school clinic within ten minutes we can evaluate an individual and positively or negatively tell them yes you have the flu or no you do not.”

But not every school is lucky enough to have a lab on site, or even a nurse for that matter. 11 school districts in Mississippi have no school nurse. The National Association of School Nurses recommends a statewide ration of 750 students to one nurse; Mississippi currently has one school nurse for every 1092 students.