Soup for Students With Flu

By The Emory Wheel

To help students cope with the H1N1 virus, members of Chabad, a Jewish student organization, delivered chicken soup to students self-isolated in Turman South residence hall on Friday.

Rabbi Zalman Lipskier, head of Chabad, said the organization will provide soup for any students with the H1N1 virus that request it.

“Our purpose at Emory is to provide students with a home away from home,” Lipskier said.

Levi Stewart, a member of Chabad who helped deliver the soup, said he believes the chicken soup deliveries will become a weekly tradition.

“It’s very healing,” Stewart said. “It’s called the Jewish penicillin. I’m sure it helped.”

Lipskier and his wife made the soup in the Chabad house on North Decatur Road.
“It’s just good chicken soup made with love,” Lipskier said.

College senior and Chabad member Alon Sasson called Lipskier to ask for soup when he had H1N1.

Sasson said he was impressed that even though Lipskier’s wife just had a baby, the couple was willing to provide soup for those dealing with the H1N1 virus.

Sasson said Lipskier called him everyday he was sick to check up on him.

“Although I couldn’t go for the Friday dinner last week because of the sickness, they gave me enough food that made me feel like I was there at the Chabad house,” said Sasson.

Sasson, along with between 100 and 150 other students, regularly attends the weekly Shabbat dinners at the Chabad house.

Sasson recently recovered from the H1N1 virus and said the soup helped him do so.

As of last Wednesday, there were 200 presumptive cases of H1N1 virus, according to Michael Huey, director of Student Health Services (SHS).

Students diagnosed with H1N1 virus are encouraged to self-isolate until their fever is gone for 24 hours without the help of fever-reducing medications.

Those infected students who can not stay with family or friends in the Atlanta area are urged to relocate to Turman South for self-isolation.

SHS will most likely prescribe Tamiflu, a five-day antiviral medication that slows the replication of the H1N1 virus, to the students who are diagnosed with the virus.

Trials for the H1N1 vaccine began this August and Huey said the vaccine may be available in limited quantities in late October.

Alexander Isakov, director of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, said most people with H1N1 will recover with the help of Tylenol and fluids.

Stewart said, “[Chabad] will continue to support any students that are sick. We will help them with anything.”