My daughter attends a Kindergarten at a Taipei Elementary School.
She came home yesterday with an “Anal Swab Worm Check Kit” including a piece of clear plastic that is to be ‘pressed against the anus, folded in half and returned to school’. It came with really amazingly badly drawn diagrams.
Has anyone else come across this? I’m feeling that this is
a) unhygenic
b) unscientific (what else can be on the swab as it isn’t sealed)
c) just a little bit too anal for the a Kindergarten (sorry about the pun), and
d) is my daughter’s teacher REALLY SICK???
Symptoms are obvious and we check regularly.
I bet that they don’t check the teachers or parents and they could be carriers. Anyone can have the little blighters.
Is it possible that you signed off on your daughter’s participation in the school’s health program/policy when you first registered her, possibly unknowlingly? Sounds like this one is a public school (??), but I know that many companies (and thus private schools) have such policies that can sometimes be rather “comprehensive”. We e.g. have annual health-checks where they expect you to have a full upper-body X-ray every year, refusal to participate in this “benefit” is met with lack of understanding as these programs are mostly seen as a fringe benefit or “bonus” by both employer and most employees …
My son went to the Chinese elementary school and we always had to do that.
On a related issue: Did you ever use those refrigerated “anal insertions” when the children were little and got a fever? You keep them in the refrigerator, and when the child gets a fever you just stick one right up there …
You just wash your hands afterward, so it is no big deal.
All of the students I teach get these from their school. As well as some pill they have to take. Are there so many people with worms here that it is a necessity?
My kids go to one of the best (okay, most expensive) private Chinese elementary school and they had to go through the motion of a health test that includes that thing mentioned as well. We talked about it when it came up back home and explained that this was for their protection and a bit like when uncle doctor gives you an injection and it was accepted. See what shit some people eat, cooked (sorry, warmed up) at some mobile kitchens on main streets and in some dark alleys. Yuk!
Christ what have these kids got worms ? I don’t quite get this. WTF ? Huh ? Are they sticking their fingers up each other’s arses are something ? How are worms catching ?
Sheep dips and worming tablets are the only answer. (Jesus what sort of levels of hygiene do people have in this country ? City dwellers with worms ? Yuk Yuk.)
The little buggers crawl out your anus at night and cause an itchy sensation as the wander about laying eggs. Most kids respond by scrtching their anus in their sleep and collect eggs laid by the worms on their fingers. Later they, being kids, put their fingers in their mouth, eggs go down and hatch in the guts and so on and so on. Nature’s miraculous cycle in action.
It is very easy to spread if you don’t wash hands etc. after using the toilet.
They are annoying and unpleasant but don’t kill you.
At the same time the things you can get from cats, dogs and birds can kill you - that’s if you kissy kissy smoochy and sleep close to them. I don’t like dogs in restaurants - ick.
… so I’m assuming you stuck your fingers into your mouth “afterwards” and the “little buggers” settled comfortably in one of your incisors and chewed it clean off, right?
I know pinworms are still pretty common in children in the US. I’m sure enterovirus is also a motivation for getting the swabs done. All the more reason why watching grown women here walk out ofa reeking toilet stall, stick their hands under water for a short time and then shake them twice before going back to work in the kitchen really, really scares me.
I read somewhere that there are many types of worms and other parasites that can infest the human body but that most people are unaware even if they are infected. You can only get tested for a few types. No one gets tested in the West for this type of stuff, so we wouldn’t even know if we were carriers. Not sure if parasites are more common in Taiwan due to bad hygiene or maybe they are just more aware of the problem.
