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Download Shaanxi province's education authority told schools and kindergartens on Wednesday not to mass-distribute medicine to their students without authorization. The provincial Education Department's emergency notification follows allegations that 1,455 kindergartners in Xi'an received a prescription drug without their parents' permission this school year. "Any school or kindergarten that wants to give medicine to its students for disease prevention should report this in advance with a detailed plan, and it may implement the disease prevention plan only after getting approval," the notification said. All primary and middle schools as well as kindergartens should learn from the painful lesson of the recent unauthorized distribution of prescription medicine and enhance their management to ensure children's safety, the notification said. The incident is more serious than originally believed, as an investigation showed that the number of children who got the unauthorized prescription medicine was more than double what was first reported. Shaanxi Party chief Zhao Zhengyong, Shaanxi Governor Lou Qinjian and Xi'an Party chief Wei Minzhou all instructed their departments to handle the case properly. On Monday, a number of parents in Xi'an, the provincial capital, went to the private Fengyun kindergarten and demanded to be told why drugs were given to their children. "I wonder why they gave the harmful drug to my kid if she was not ill," said a mother surnamed Cheng, whose 5-year-old daughter attends the kindergarten. | 
