Foreign Exchange Students.....

and immunization records have been a nightmare!!!!!

Thought one was caught up and upon further investigation, he needs more or proof he has had them. Oh, and how they date them are inconstant and completely different from ours. I could handle different if it was the same way all the time. But you get yyyy/mm/dd, yyyy/m/d, d/m/yyyy. Oh, don't get me started on how "Harvey" complicated things.

Rant over!!!!!!! (it's been a long Friday)

You can send them to their consulate or the health department to get them translated. Some I gave up on and said I couldn't accept them unless they were translated.

We usually have 1, many years no FES's. This year we have 4! Luckily I can send their records to our county health nurse and she is very good at

deciphering them.

The "Pink Book" is your friend!!! Vaccine info from CDC has an appendix with foreign terms

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/b/foreign-products-tables.pdf

I am at an Elementary school so don't have foreign exchange students but do have alot of kids from other countries. If we are unable to read an immunization record we give the parents a list of places they can go to have the records translated. We used to be able to send them to the County Health department for this service but they no longer do it. I have only had to send a few parents to have them translated - I agree with you on the documentation some of these people bring - 5-10 different pieces of paper/documents, dates/vaccines listed all over the place - written all different ways...drives me nuts sometimes.

The "Pink Book" is your friend!!! Vaccine info from CDC has an appendix with foreign terms

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/b/foreign-products-tables.pdf

The pink book is awesome. We just had a family with 3 little ones from india coming in, and whoever was working at the health office doing the translation and transcribing must have been having a bad day because multiple dates were entered incorrectly (like before the student was born incorrectly) and they were all marked as being compliant even though none of them were (Hep B requirements are different here than in India).

The original records and the pink book link saved me from having to send them back with a note asking for a translator to actually take their time with these records.

I always find that my students here from other countries tend to come in at the beginning of the year and by the time I finally get all their immunization figured out they are leaving again. I wish they would come AFTER my immunization report for the state is due.

The "Pink Book" is your friend!!! Vaccine info from CDC has an appendix with foreign terms

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/b/foreign-products-tables.pdf

Great tip.

Thank you. I had forgotten about the "Pink Book" However, the issue wasn't with the translating of the record other than the dates. Also, some of them were not complete or I don't have the complete record. Working on getting that now. With the hurricane and all, it has been a little stressful.

We were given extra time for the students impacted by Hurricane Harvey, and I'm currently checking each student I have in my system to make sure they are on time and the one's who aren't, I have to call and give notification for them to get their shots taken care of.