Special Report: World tackles A/H1N1 flu |
Beijing is set to begin a full-scale A/H1-N1 flu vaccination drive to inoculate all registered citizens above the age of three free-of-charge. But the city also has a large number of migrants, 400,000 of whom are children.
Beijing's Mingyuan school is located on the city's outskirts. Its nine hundred plus students are all the children of migrants living in Beijing.
As cases of the A/H1-N1 flu continue to rise, the school has begun to check the body temperatures of all students before they enter the school gate every morning.
Li Dan, student of duty of mornning check, said, "We have started the check since the semester began. We also check our temperatures at home every morning. Those who have fevers are not allowed to go to school."
Teachers at the school have been telling their students about the various preventive measures against the A/H1-N1 flu available to them.
And the local education authorities have sent out parental consent forms for the migrants to fill out if they want their children to be vaccinated.
However, the school doctor said that less than 20 percent of the students have brought back the forms so far.
Most parents who consent to the inoculation have little idea about the vaccine, either.
A parent of Student said, "I filled the form out and my child is going to have the vaccine. I don't know much about the vaccine. I won't have it."
The school said most migrant parents are busy with their businesses, and have little time to take care of their children. And the level of hygiene at their homes is not very good. Usually it is the students who tell their parents about preventive measures. But prevention in schools is far from enough.