A medical worker disinfects a school in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City schools say they are short on funds to battle the influenza A H1N1 virus, which has been spreading among students since the new school began last month.

“We will put the idea forward at an upcoming meeting with parents,” Dung said, adding that contributions would be purely voluntary and need not come in the form of money only.

“The costs of preventive devices like face masks, thermometers and hand soaps are all incurred by the school,” he said.

Dung also said that health workers had sprayed the school with antiseptic agent Chloramine B twice since the new school year started last month.

Truong Vinh Ky High School vice principal Truong Thi Tam said her school had spent over VND10 million (US$561.13) a month on disease prevention, including antiseptic agents and masks.

Tam said although it was announced that each school was to be given 6.5 kilogram of Chloramine B by the city’s education department, Truong Vinh Ky, which has reported one H1N1-positive case, has received nothing so far.

“I wonder if it’s because our school is private-owned? District 11’s education division refused to give us Chloramine B when our representatives came to ask for it,” she said.

Doctor Nguyen Tai Dung, who is in charge of school health under the HCMC education department, said the city’s health department had allocated 10 tons of Chloramine B for distribution at each local school.

“Besides Chloramine B, the city’s education sector doesn’t get any other financial support for H1N1 prevention,” Dr. Dung said.

“Each school has to buy equipment with its own money.”

Dung said they would ask the education department set up a fund specifically for disease prevention that could be used not only for swine flu but also for other sicknesses, like hand-foot-mouth disease, in the future.

But HCMC Department of Education and Training vice director Nguyen Tien Dat had a different view.

Dat said it’s important to give schools Chloramine B, while other things like thermometers were inexpensive enough for schools to buy themselves.

He said schools should focus more on increasing human resources to implement other preventive measures like cleaning the school thoroughly and spraying antiseptic agents.

Dat suggested that schools get money for disease prevention from infrastructure and hygiene funds that parents pay into at the beginning of each school year.

On Wednesday, Vietnam recorded another 90 H1N1 infections, increasing the country’s tally to 3,021.

Some 1,410 of the patients have fully recovered and two have died, according to the health ministry’s Preventive Health and Environment Department.

So far the disease has hit 48 out of 63 provinces with HCMC, Hanoi, and the central coastal province of Khanh Hoa as the hardest-hit areas.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff