May 4, 2009

To date, there are NO CONFIRMED CASES OF H1N1 IN CUERNAVACA! Here is a link to an article from our local paper 'Diario de Morelos' dated Saturday, May 2. It has the information from our Secretary of Health mentioning that the flu cases in our state (Morelos) were not Swine Flu.

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April 30, 2009

I was invited by the state government to attend a meeting with our Secretary of  Health (Dr. Victor Caballero), the Secretary of Economic Development (Dr. Rafael Tamayo), the Secretary of Labor (Victor Reyes), and the Secretary of Tourism (Marcos Suárez).  Dr. Caballero explained that the four flu cases have all recovered and have been sent home.

There are 11 other cases under observation and awaiting the lab report to see what type of flu or respiratory disease they have.  The safety measure of not having people congregate in enclosed spaces remains in effect until May 6 as a means to break the contamination cycle.

This is a big holiday weekend in Mexico as on May 1, Labor Day, is celebrated.  Movie theaters, museums, discotheques, water parks are all closed.  May 5 is Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of the victory of the Mexicans over the French Foreign Legion in 1862, so this is also a holiday.

Toward the end of the meeting it was announced that the four cases of flu detected in Morelos, our state, were not swine flu, but Type A influenza.  This confirms that there are no swine flu cases in our state, nor have there been any swine flu deaths.  All the cases of influenza have responded to treatment.

People have responded overwhelmingly to taking all the safety precautions.

At Cemananahuac, we remain concerned for the safety of all our students and teachers, and we continue to follow the precautions as recommended by the CDC and the Ministry of Health in Mexico.  We will send updates as information becomes available.

Harriet Goff Guerrero
Registrar

Friday night, April 24, 2009

To our students and concerned parents and others:

At Cemanahuac we are well aware of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico City.   We have been monitoring the news reports, as well as the Center for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations (UN) web pages and advisories.

Cuernavaca has not been affected as Mexico City (also known as the D.F., Federal District), and the State of Mexico (which surrounds most of Mexico City) have been.   

There could be several reasons for this.  Perhaps it is because of its warmer climate; perhaps it is because of not being such a densely populated area.   Perhaps it is because of not having the congested and packed public transportation which is so characteristic of Mexico City’s subway system.  Although occasionally passengers do ride standing up on local busses, municipal regulations do not allow for standing passengers which usually are 20 to 30 passenger busses.  An interesting twist is that Cuernavaca’s inefficient public transportation system may be helping to keep people healthy.

Schools were ordered closed in Mexico City today, Friday.  I suspect they will be closed more days next week.  News reports say museums and theaters were ordered closed also, though that was not included in the original federal government instructions, which were issued at 11:30 p.m. Thursday night.  No such closures have been ordered in Cuernavaca nor in the rest of the State of Morelos.  Schools, theaters, museums, all operated normally today in the State of Morelos.  The 2 o’clock PM news programs reported no cases of influenza in Cuernavaca.  

Some of the precautions issued by the health organizations involve not being in air conditioned spaces where the air is constantly recirculating.  Driving with car windows open is recommended.  Cuernavaca is frequently referred to as the City of Eternal Spring.  Very few houses or businesses have air conditioning.  At the school we have no air conditioning; the same is true of our host family homes and those of the school staff.  All our classrooms either have big windows which are open during class, or they actually face out onto the garden with only three walls, with no wall on the garden side.  Our school bus on which we travel for field study trips does have air conditioning, but also has windows which can be opened and two large air vents in the roof.   We can drive it with or without air conditioning.  

While the emergency continues in Mexico City we will take all suggested precautions, many of which are the same as those used on cruise ships:  suggest frequent washing of hands.   We will place bottles of rubbing alcohol in all bathrooms.   We will have handrails and door knobs cleansed periodically with sanitizer, and we will use disposable cups and flatware at our snack bar.  We will instruct all students and staff to abstain from shaking hands and greeting people with a kiss on the cheek.  We will post the UN suggestions for stopping the spread of the influenza.  As other precautions are suggested by health authorities, we will follow them as well.  

We will continue to monitor this outbreak closely, and we will be checking with the State of Morelos Department of Health.   We will also consulting with Dr. Jaime Belikin, who sees our students when needed, and who speaks excellent English.  Dr. Belikin did much of his medical training in the United States (Boston) and has been involved in several FDA approved  studied of travelers diarrhea and other infectious diseases in which our students have participated in the past.

I hope this will allay your understandable worries.  If you have more concerns, please contact Vivian Harvey, who will be receiving updates as needed.

Charles P. Goff
Director of Admissions
 

Much has been said in recent weeks about the dangers of traveling to Mexico. Below, we have assembled information from our staff as well as recent groups and students.

Personal Thoughts from Vivian Harvey, Cemanauac Educational Programs Coordinator

Professor Carolyn W. Perry, Foreign Languages
West Kentucky Community & Technical College

I’m in Ohio now, but I just returned from three weeks in Mexico, during which I was in five different states, mostly with a group of 21 travelers who were there to observe the wonderful crafts and textiles during Carnival time.   I too read all the reports on the Internet (I get the New York Times and the Washington Post on line every day), and much of the time I could get CNN on television.  So I saw the US State Department warning on travel to Mexico.  The only difference is that while I was reading and seeing all of this dire news, I was sitting in a sunny Zocalo (rather than in cold and gloomy Ohio),  soaking up the culture, the sunshine, and the general ambiance of a Mexican city or town....and wondering why there was such commotion about “danger in Mexico.”  

My 21 travelers had absolutely no problems, and many of them came through the airport in Mexico City on their own, with no Spanish ability.   We had no purse snatching, no pick-pocketing, nothing but great food and a really great educational trip though some of the most indigenous parts of Mexico.

As an American woman, I've been living in Mexico for about 20 years, and I've been traveling there for longer than this, also to Central and Latin America.  And I've been receiving letters about the "danger" in Mexico for just as long, often from people who have never been there and never will be.  In all that time, and with driving back and forth from Ohio to Mexico each year and with traveling ALL over the country with groups of students and adults, I have never experienced this "danger" that I read and hear about on the news.

But I haven't been in a school shooting, a bank hold up, a home robbery/murder, a post office shooting where an employee has "gone postal," or any of these other terrible things either that I have read about on US news.  If murder rates were the criteria by which danger were judged, who on earth would come to the US?  

There are certainly problems in Mexico, but they are primarily on the US borders (at a minimum, 18-24 hours from Cuernavaca, where Cemanahuac is located), and they almost always have an added component of heavy drug involvement.

I love Mexico City, which is vibrant and alive at all hours, has magnificent museums and terrific restaurants, and it certainly has a huge population.  We take full advantage of our proximity to the city, as we go to the Templo Mayor area, the Museum of Anthropology, the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the homes of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and the splendid archeological site of Teotihuacan.  We are always on our private Cemanahuac bus and always with a Cemanahuac administrator, and the only problem is the huge traffic, which is interesting in itself.

To judge an entire population of 100 million people from a few incidents is as sensible as judging all schools and universities in the US by a shooting in Illinois or Virginia or Maryland or Colorado...or the entire countries of Spain or England by subway bombings in Madrid or London.

I’ll go back to Cemanahuac again in May for a week, and then I’ll drive down from Columbus at the end of May, as I have for the past six or seven years.  I anticipate no problems, other than staying awake, and I anticipate no problems for our students either...and they have the great advantage of flying, not driving.

Please write to me by email if you have specific questions....but be assured that the events you hear about on the news are taking place a long distance from Cuernavaca and Cemanahuac and present neither danger nor concern to our students.

vivian



 
Vivian B. Harvey, MA. MS
Educational Programs Coordinator
Cemanahuac Educational Community
Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
vivian@cemanahuac.com

Home address:
3106 Walden Ravines
Columbus, OH  43221
614-876-8768 (email preferred!)