Kindergarten closed in Xi’an for dispensing medicine illegally

A Kindergarten was shut down and three top officials questioned by police after reports the school illegally gave prescription cold medicine to possibly hundreds of students over two years in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the local newspaper China Business View reported on Wednesday.

A total of 690 students of the Fengyun Kindergarten in the provincial capital Xi'an are eligible to receive free medical checkups, said Huang Xiaohua, vice secretary general of the city government, and they could have received the medicine.

Parents complained that their children developed constipation, stomachache, leg pains or poor appetite after the exams. A six-year-old who was given the medicine was found to have kidney problems.

The kindergarten was ordered shut by the local education authorities. Police are holding the kindergarten principal's, Zhao Baoying; legal representative Sun Xuehong, and its doctor, Huang Linxia, the report said.

The kindergarten said they gave the children the cold medicine to prevent them from being sick. However, Huang Linxia was found to have no qualifications to prescribe such drugs, the report said. A local company, however, still sold the drugs to the kindergarten.

Parents said they suspected that the kindergarten went to pains to have every child attend classes every day for the sake of money since they had to refund the fees of any child who didn't go to school due to illness, the report said.

Some parents said they suspected the children were guinea pigs in a drug testing scheme, according to Xinmin Weekly.