A schoolgirl that a teacher forced to shovel snow in sub-zero temperatures for almost three hours is facing the possibility of getting her fingers amputated.
A report stated that the 13-year-old girl suffered severe frostbite because of the ordeal with her digits badly swelling and some of them have turned black.
The student, Lu Yanyan, talked to local media and said that she and her classmates were ordered by their teacher to sweep snow off the campus on December 31, 2019, a day when temperatures plummeted as low as minus one degree Celsius.
Lu is a student at the Taipingzhuang Town Middle School where she is in the seventh grade. The school is located in Anqing, a city located in Heilongjiang Province which is near the border with Russia, reported Heilongjiang TV.
According to Lu, she failed to wear gloves on that day so had to complete her task bare-handed. Because of this, she soon felt her hands go numb but when she approached her teacher asking if she could rest inside, the teacher forced her to continue sweeping outdoors until the ground had been cleared of snow.
By the time Lu and her classmates were done, she could not feel her fingers anymore.
Although Lu’s mother tried to seek medical attention, doctors at several local hospitals refused to treat the girl because they did not want to bear responsibility if the treatment failed.
The mother had to use a taxi to bring her daughter to Daqing Oil Field General Hospital in Daqing where doctors put the girl under observation.
Doctors say the swelling should abate on its own quickly enough but for the digits that had turned black, a longer time is needed for them to return to their normal function. But if they don’t recover properly, then those fingers will need to be amputated.
For its part, the school admitted that the girl got injured while shoveling snow on campus.
The headmaster is now trying to coordinate with the school’s insurance company to cover any related expenses. He added that the school was willing to bear responsibility for the aftermath.
Replaced!