Two Rwandan Children Kept Home From School Amid Ebola Scare

The children had recently moved to the United States from Rwanda and were due to start school at Howard R. Yocum Elementary School. Then words got out and concerned parents started buzzing, Fox News reports.

Though there has not been any case of Ebola in New Jersey, the presence of these two children at the elementary school has made parents panic that their children may be exposed to the deadly virus which has claimed the lives of over 4000 people.

Obviously, the actions of these parents including the school district is a clear indication of ignorance. Rewanda is in the eastern part of Africa and so far, we know that the Ebola outbreak has only been reported in the western region of Africa with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia being the major countries affected.

Rewanda on the other hand, is about 2,600 miles away from these countries. Does this mean anyone from Africa is exposed to the virus?

“Anybody from that area should just stay there until all this stuff is resolved. There’s nobody affected here let’s just keep it that way,” parent John Povlow told Philadelphia’s Fox 29.

The Maple Shade School District itself has been criticized for initiating the Ebola panic on the parents. The District had sent a letter informing teachers about the two Rwandan children who were about to start school there on Monday. As a “precaution,” they said the school nurses would monitor the children and take their temperatures three times each day for the first 21 days, to ensure they didn't have the virus.

But when rumors about the letter started to spread among parents, the school posted it publicly online.

“We have students who have spent time in the eastern portion of Africa that were scheduled to start in our schools on Monday,” Superintendent Beth Norcia wrote in the letter.

“Despite the fact that the students are symptom-free and not from an affected area, the parents have elected to keep their children home past the 21 day waiting period.”

According to Inquisitr, the letter did not make clear whether the Rwandan kids’ own parents volunteered to keep them home for three weeks, or whether the New Jersey school had pressured them into doing so, to avoid further Ebola panic.

On Monday, however, Nocia reversed course, posting another open letter, saying that the Rwandan students would be “welcomed” into the school “next week,” and stating that the decision to keep the children at home was not “mean-spirited or ill intended.”