Students hit by odd malady

KENDARI, Southeast Sulawesi: Members of a Buton regency high school were relocated last week to the nearest elementary school after many female students complained of a mysterious ailment.

Despite the young women's claims of suffering seizures, Pulau Makasar high school principal Bibu Kari said Thursday that Buton health officers had failed to find anything medically wrong with them. The teenagers claimed the seizures stopped when they left their classrooms.

Antara news agency quoted Bibu as saying that "90 percent" of the female students were affected.

Teachers and parents held Koran readings and sacrificed two goats in an effort to end the ailment, but the complaints continued.

Idris, an official of the Buton health team which visited the school, said he suspected nonmedical causes of the seizures.

Buton residents say the symptoms are known as samauda, which they said could be caused by troubled men whose marriage proposals were rejected. Idris suggested the school and parents should seek the help of traditional healers.