As part of their theme week on the politics of refugees and immigrants, a 5th grade class from the Lycée Aline Mayrisch, accompanied by their teachers, recently visited the LNS to learn a little more about the involvement of the LNS forensic medical service and virology-serology unit in this theme.

Once a year, for a predetermined week, each class in the school completes an interdisciplinary project allowing pupils to work independently and responsibly to develop their transferable skills. For this key moment in the school year, the usual school timetable is suspended to allow space for a more flexible form of teaching and learning, based on the acquisition of specific skills according to the age group of the pupils concerned. The project completed by the pupils is a collective class project, this year based upon the refug.

In order to manage this visit to the LNS in the best possible way, the class was divided into two groups: the class was divided into two groups. The first followed Dr med. Thorsten Schwark, forensic doctor, for a visit to the premises of the forensic medical service, while the other accompanied Dr sc. Ngyuen Trung Nguyen, head of the virology-serology service.

During their visite, the students had a condensed presentation on the way in which the forensic medical service, which works mainly at the request of the Luxembourg judicial authorities, operates. In addition, this service is also requested by national authorities to help define the age of underage refugees arriving in the country without documents. Dr med Thorsten Schwark explained the pupils with a detailed presentation the reasons and the different ways in which this procedure is implemented.

In addition, the virology-serology specialist began his visit with a detailed presentation of the problems of refugees and immigrants from a public health perspective. Indeed, this unit regularly works with the health inspectorate to screen the refugees for diseases that could affect them (tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis C, etc.). After the theoretical part, the students also had the opportunity to discover the virology-serology laboratory.

In addition to their visit to the LNS, the students also talked to Serge Tonnar for his association “Mir wëllen Iech ons Heemecht weisen” and Marianne Donven from the Hariko project. They met young refugees of their age during a meeting with students from the Lycée Technique du Centre and watched the film “Mos stellarium” by Karolina Markiewicz and Pascal Piron on the journey of migrants arriving in Luxembourg. From this project week came out a very interesting website, created by the students themselves!

Many thanks to the two LNS specialists and their respective teams for taking the time to welcome the class to their respective premises and for sharing their knowledge with such professionalism and enthusiasm.