By DIANA WALSH
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
As many as 30 seventh-graders at a middle school here will be tested for hepatitis and HIV because a substitute science teacher allowed the students to share needle-like devices to prick themselves for blood.
The substitute teacher, who has been fired as a result of the incident, was giving a life-science lesson to five classes when he asked for volunteers to have their blood drawn using lancets _ which are similar to the small tools that diabetics use to test their blood.
Rather than giving each volunteer a new lancet to draw individual blood samples, the teacher, whose name was not released, permitted students to share them, according to Jan Christensen, superintendent of the Redwood City School District.
"Each student should have had their own one," Christensen said. "I'm shocked and stunned that anyone would have thought this was appropriate protocol."
A mother whose daughter participated in the class notified the school about the science experiment last Thursday. The school's vice principal and the substitute teacher spent Friday meeting with the classes and identifying the students who had blood drawn.
The school then notified county health officials and the principal began contacting parents whose children were involved in the experiment.
Chances that any of the children involved are infected with Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C or HIV are slim, according to Doris Estremera, public information officer for the San Mateo County health department.
Christensen said the teacher, who has expressed deep remorse about what had happened.
Christensen said she was shocked not only that the kids had shared lancets, but that they were drawing blood at all. The science lesson is designed to allow children to look at their cells under a microscope. Normally, students gather the cells by swabbing the inside of their cheeks and are not asked to draw blood.
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