Qinghai children given new school clinics

Eleven-year-old Lhamo Drolma had a health examination earlier in July for the first time in her life, thanks to the newly built clinic donated by a local foundation.

It is the 1,000th clinic that the Zhongmai Daohe Charity Foundation, an arm of Chinese direct sales company Zhongmai Technology, has donated to needy schools in the nation’s central and western area since 2013.

The charity organization purchases equipment, fixes up or renovates classrooms, and gives annual training in health knowledge and firstaid skills, normally to a teacher from the schools.

Less developed areas especially in China’s countryside are key to building a prosperous society, said Gu Xiulian, director of the China Next Generation Care Working Committee, at the clinic’s inauguration ceremony.

“The project is going smoothly under the help of Zhongmai Daohe Charity Foundation. Children in the

Zhang Shengyuan, head teacher of Lhamo Drolma’s class

western areas are benefiting a lot,” she added.

Lhamo Drolma, of Mongol ethnic group, lives and studies in the rural area of Qinghai province. She and more than 500 schoolmates at Gucheng Center School were led into the 50 square meter room, equipped with medical devices, earlier this month. Most of them, aged from 7 to 16, had their first ever physicals.

Pingan prefecture, where Lhamo Drolma’s school sits, is located on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of around 2,100 meters. The school is about two hours by bus from the provincial capital Xining.

Children living at Pingan can easily contract pneumonia, and their relatively low blood oxygen level may lead to coughing, shortness of breath, fast heart rates, and other diseases related to of high altitudes, said Qi Changjun, doctor at a local health center.

Malnutrition usually aggravates the situation, added Wang Faxing, doctor at a local health center.

The school clinic will prove a great convenience for patients and doctors. “We will benefit a lot from this. If a pupil catches a fever, there are commonly used drugs on campus; if there’s an emergency, a young patient may need a place to be stabilized and then be transferred to hospital,” Wang said.

Due to sluggish local economic development, most adults go to earn their livings in remote provinces such as Henan, Hebei and Guangdong, leaving behind their children to live with the older generations or to attend boarding school.

Take Lhamo Drolma’s class — class one grade three for example. Of 45 pupils, almost all of them are left-behind children. They are of different ethnic groups, with the Han as the majority and the rest from the Mongol and Hui ethnic groups, head teacher Zhang Shengyuan said.

Previously when the campus offered no health services, Zhang needed to look after young patients before their parents came to school, or send them to a nearby clinic.

“I think the clinic is quite useful. It’s convenient for me to take care of the kids when an emergency happens,” Zhang said.

The construction cost varies from 30,000 yuan ($4,490) to 50,000 yuan each, tailoring the clinic to the schools’ situation, according to the foundation.

It’s convenient for me to take care of the kids when an emergency happens.”