HCM CITY — HCM City schools have been instructed to work with ward-level health centres to disinfect classrooms and devices used to serve children eating lunch, taking a nap and attending extra classes ahead of the new academic year that begins next Monday.

The District 10 Education Division has ordered all schools to check water containers for mosquito larvae, ensure they have health officials, install first aid devices and hygiene tools for students and staffs and make plans for quarantine in case epidemics break out.

It has urged health officials to propagate information to schools about diseases such as hand-foot-mouth, dengue fever, chicken pox and others.

The District 7 Education Division has ordered school principals to spray classrooms and other rooms used by children every Saturday or Sunday to kill mosquitoes.

It also told them to cut all brushes in school campuses.

Kindergartens should clean their toys each week, and teachers should teach children to wash their hands before and after eating to avoid transmission of diseases, it said.

The HCM City Preventive Health Centre has instructed its workers in districts to speed up surveillance of diseases, including hand-foot-mouth disease, at schools to provide timely treatment.

The centre’s report showed that no diseases broke out during the summer.

In the summer many kindergartens remained open. But, with the new school year beginning on September 5, children will have to stay at home for the kindergartens to be cleaned and disinfected.

According to the Department of Education and Training, the city will have nearly 1.2 million students this school year, 59,000 higher than last year. — VNS