Students with IV Infusions Stir Controversy

Students takiing intravenous infusions as they prepare for the upcoming National College Entrance Examination [File Photo: sina weibo]

Photos showing students taking intravenous infusions as they prepare for the upcoming National College Entrance Examination have spawned thousands of reposts and comments by netizens on China's Weibo microblogging service, the Yangtze Merchants Daily reports.

Photos of third-year students at Xiaogan No.1 High School, a well-known senior high school in central China's Hubei province show the students taking amino acid infusions as a nutritional supplement to help them sit through long hours of exam preparation.

Many netizens expressed sympathy for the students, recalling their own days of preparing for the make-or-break test that decided their future.

One netizen commented that such pictures appalled him and were an indictment of the cruel state examination system which determines whether high school students can attend a university based solely on their test scores.

Others commented that they found the practice particularly suspicious and questioned whether school authorities had taken advantage of students' anxiety and ordered them to use the infusions to make money.

The school, however, denied the allegations. One teacher said the government had always subsidized the school clinic for IV infusions, and the reason so many third-year students used them in classrooms was because it saved them time from having to visit the school clinic.

One netizen, who claimed to be one of the graduates of the high school, said it was an established practice that third-year students who prepared for the National College Entrance Exam take IV infusions of amino acid.

He added that the infusions were voluntary and he himself had taken one when he prepared for the exam.