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Hospitals sued over HIV diagnosis

By Jane Chen | July 2, 2010, Friday | Online Edition

TWO hospitals in Xi'an City, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, have been sued for allegedly wrongly diagnosing a 70-year-old woman as HIV positive and publishing her details online.

The woman surnamed Cao yesterday handed in her lawsuit to Xishan District People's Court in her hometown in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, today's Kunming-based City News reported.

She demanded that Xi'an Disease Control & Prevention Center and Xi'an No.5 Hospital delete her details from their Website and apologize for the wrong diagnosis as well as pay 100,000 yuan (US$14,747) in compensation.

Cao said she visited the Xi'an No.5 Hospital for a lung complaint in September 2008, when she was diagnosed as carrying HIV.

The hospital sent her blood sample to the disease control center for a double check in October and her infection was confirmed.

Her personal information was then uploaded to a national medical Intranet for AIDS/HIV, which is accessible to all medical institutions across the nation.

In February last year, she transferred to the care of Kunming Infectious Disease Hospital and was surprised to be cleared of HIV infection.

Cao then launched the lawsuit against the Xi'an hospitals and demanded compensation for 10,000 yuan in HIV treatment and 90,000 yuan for mental damages.

The Xi'an Disease Control & Prevention Center was ordered to pay compensation in another case of wrong HIV diagnosis in 2006, according to Cao's lawyer Zhang Honglei.

The center had cited four possibilities for the error - a mistake in collecting blood; a tainted sample; a lab mistake, or the patient recovered on her own.

Dean Yang Shaomin with Yunnan Infectious Disease Hospital said Cao's blood sample could have shown a false positive at the Xi'an hospitals due to her poor immunity from the lung disease.

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