Elementary schools in rural areas could become the weak links in the nation’s efforts to prevent and control the spread of influenza A(H1N1), after some were found to have poorly equipped health centers with expired drugs.
A pharmaceutical company recently dispatched teams to 13 elementary schools around the country to check their healthcare facilities and said what they found were shabby healthcare facilities that included old books and magazines on healthcare education, expired medicines and cockroach-breeding cupboards full of brooms and sports gear.
All the schools inspected, including Tusheng Elementary School in Tainan County and Jinshan Elementary School in Taipei County, had complained about the lack of thermometers and hand soap that are vital in the national fight against outbreaks of the new flu strain, the company said.
A school nurse who spoke on condition of anonymity said the school principal arrived at school at 6am every day to check the temperature of all 500 students because the school had only three head thermometers.
The nurse said the school had asked local education authorities for funds to renovate its old and dark health center, which had only two head thermometers and a trolley that was about to break down.
LOW FUNDING
The authorities answered their call but gave the school a mere NT$1,500 at the beginning of the new school year, allowing it to buy only one more head thermometer, she said.
Yen Han-wen (晏涵文), a professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Health Education at National Taiwan Normal University, said health centers were often an overlooked facility in schools.
Schools prefer to use their limited resources to dispatch a sports team to other cities for a two-day competition than keep a health center up-to-date, Yen said, describing the health centers in rural schools as the “poor among the poor.”
NEW CASES
In related news, the Central Epidemics Command Center (CECC) reported yesterday 11 new hospitalized cases of A(H1N1) as the new flu strain continued to spread throughout the country.
These cases brought the total number of A(H1N1) hospitalized patients to 265, the CECC said.
As of yesterday, 399 classes in 267 schools around the country were still on suspension because of A(H1N1) infections among students.
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