A school in Yunnan Province force students to take "pre-prescript" Chinese cauldron medicine to “cure” the "yet to be sick"
BeWater(3 Mar) Just because the CCP political bureau makes this broad and vague calling, a school at Lincang city of Yunnan Province orders students to take cauldron medicine as a condition for going schools.Some schools go further to demand students to upload the Chinese medicine prescription, a copy of purchase receipt or video showing they are taking the medicine as school check-ins approval evidence.
Beijing News reported on 1 March about a widely internet circulated notice issued by the Education and Sports Bureau of the Linxiang district of Lincang city. The notice demands all towns and villages level units of the Education and Sports Bureau, schools and kindergartens to follow the instructions to allow traditional Chinese medicine to play a ‘maximum’ role in prevention of the virus. Students and parents are commanded to show evidence that they have taken cauldron medicine as a pre-requisite to be allowed to go to schools when the school term begins in March. Photos of Chinese medicine prescriptions and children drinking the medicine must be provided to schools. Schools need to provide daily electronic figures of students taking the Chinese medicine to the Education and Sports Bureau administration at 6:00pm.
Schools go as far as forcing students to take these cauldron medicines as “preventive” measures to ‘cure’ the “yet to be sick”. From videos provided by local residents, long queues are lining up outside certain traditional Chinese medicine shops.The people looked like they are waiting to buy Chinese medicine.
Beijing News report on 2 March that they received a copy of the administration notice bearing the stamp chop of Lincong City No 2 Secondary School. The school demands all teachers and students to buy and prepared Chinese medicine following a Chinese medicine prescription issued by the Lincong City Chinese Medicine Hospital. Teachers and parents are ordered to acquire these “prescriptions” by age groups from the designated hospital. Parents need to inform the school and their class masters/mistresses whether their children have taken the “prescribed” Chinese medicine before they are allowed to back to school. "Evidence" of taking the "medicine" include photos/videos of drinking the medicine.
A staff from a local Chinese medicine shop said that more people are buying Chinese medicine recently. The cauldron medicine they purchase are basically the same-following administration instructions to buy certain pre-prescribed formula of Chinese herbs.
The Lincang City Education and Sports Bureau claimed that they "never force" anybody to take any medicine because taking medicine is on "voluntary" basis. However they admitted there are controversial executions by lower administrative units of the Bureau and individual schools. The school term resumption has been deferred. The execution of the policy has also been halted temporary.
A netizen who said that he was also a “Chinese medicine practitioner” commented that “even I am also a Chinese medicine practitioner, I don’t agree with blind prescription of Chinese herbs. Chinese medicine is all about personal tailored made prescription based on the individual body condition and nature of sickness of the patients as diagnosed. It takes a long time for the herbs to work out. It is not useful for just having one or two dosages. Students who have weaker health foundation may suffer from side effects such as vomit and diarrhoea. It is bad to have political formalism to meddle the application of traditional Chinese medicine.
(Other netizens) also queried the controversial measure.
“Have we not learnt from the painful lessons from Wuhanians who suffer from drug intoxication after taking antiseptic pills? The leaders just issue a notice to demand people to drink the cauldron medicine but who is there to guarantee it is safe when the so-called ‘standard’ pre-prescribed herbs soup is prepared by so many hands of different schools?If anything happens, it affects a lot of people. Be cautious!!”
“The first issue is children are the flowers of the country. Their health is of prime importance. Secondly, is there any conflict of interests when the schools mandatorily force students to buy in bulk through their designated sources of suppliers and then force them to drink whatever is ‘prescribed’?