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China Health Authorities Say Five Patients at Hangzhou Hospital Contracted HIV
Time：2017-03-01 16:41:57
Source：(Source:WSJ)
Health authorities said five patients at a Hangzhou hospital had contracted HIV as a result of a medical technician’s negligence, news that was quickly scrubbed from Chinese media sites, in an illustration of the topic’s sensitivity.
The Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a top-level public hospital, reported the outbreak to the provincial health authorities on Jan. 26, a day before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, the province’s Health and Family Planning Commission said in an announcement on Thursday.
Health authorities’ investigation found that a patient who had contracted HIV outside the hospital during the period of treatment was the source of the contamination. It said blood screening had showed the virus had then spread to five other patients after a technician violated medical protocol by using the same piece of medical equipment on multiple patients. It didn’t specify what the patients were treated for, the equipment or the procedure in which it was used, but said all patients receiving the same treatment as those infected had been tested.
Two top officials at the hospital have been suspended from their posts and the technician has been placed under criminal investigation, health authorities said.
Reached by phone, a hospital representative declined to provide more details. Calls to the provincial health authorities were unanswered.
China has become more transparent in its handling of epidemics and medical scandals since it was criticized for its tight grip on information during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. But concerns around health safety regularly erupt, eroding trust in government oversight and transparency. Last year, a scandal over improperly handled vaccines exposed weak links in the distribution of vaccines across China.
Also on Thursday, Xinhua News Agency reported that several hospital officials in east China’s Shandong province had been removed after improper procedures in the hospital’s hemodialysis unit had left nine patients infected with the hepatitis B virus.
In the 1980s and ’90s, Beijing depicted HIV and AIDS as the result of decadent, capitalist lifestyles in the West. Authorities began being more open about the virus after a scandal in the ’90s, in which farmers in Henan province were infected with HIV after selling their blood to unlicensed blood banks, which re-injected red blood cells from a tainted pool to donors after extracting plasma. Henan officials only acknowledged a pattern of unsanitary practices years later.
Revelations about the spread of HIV are still highly sensitive in a country where homosexuality or sexually transmitted diseases are uncomfortable topics. People infected with HIV are banned from government jobs, and students whose college learns of their HIV status have sometimes been expelled or pressured to leave.
China has about half the number of people living with HIV as the U.S., but roughly twice as many new infections each year. World Health Organization officials say stigmatization makes prevention efforts more difficult and have urged China to crack down on discrimination against people with HIV or those at risk for the disease.
Soon after the statement was put on the website Thursday morning, news reports and comments related to it began disappearing from China’s social-media platform Weibo and news portals such as NetEase. Weibo posts by China’s state broadcaster China Central Television and People’s Daily, the Communist Party flagship newspaper on the topic were later unavailable. The health authorities’ statement remained online.
The Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a top-level public hospital, reported the outbreak to the provincial health authorities on Jan. 26, a day before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, the province’s Health and Family Planning Commission said in an announcement on Thursday.
Health authorities’ investigation found that a patient who had contracted HIV outside the hospital during the period of treatment was the source of the contamination. It said blood screening had showed the virus had then spread to five other patients after a technician violated medical protocol by using the same piece of medical equipment on multiple patients. It didn’t specify what the patients were treated for, the equipment or the procedure in which it was used, but said all patients receiving the same treatment as those infected had been tested.
Two top officials at the hospital have been suspended from their posts and the technician has been placed under criminal investigation, health authorities said.
Reached by phone, a hospital representative declined to provide more details. Calls to the provincial health authorities were unanswered.
China has become more transparent in its handling of epidemics and medical scandals since it was criticized for its tight grip on information during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. But concerns around health safety regularly erupt, eroding trust in government oversight and transparency. Last year, a scandal over improperly handled vaccines exposed weak links in the distribution of vaccines across China.
Also on Thursday, Xinhua News Agency reported that several hospital officials in east China’s Shandong province had been removed after improper procedures in the hospital’s hemodialysis unit had left nine patients infected with the hepatitis B virus.
In the 1980s and ’90s, Beijing depicted HIV and AIDS as the result of decadent, capitalist lifestyles in the West. Authorities began being more open about the virus after a scandal in the ’90s, in which farmers in Henan province were infected with HIV after selling their blood to unlicensed blood banks, which re-injected red blood cells from a tainted pool to donors after extracting plasma. Henan officials only acknowledged a pattern of unsanitary practices years later.
Revelations about the spread of HIV are still highly sensitive in a country where homosexuality or sexually transmitted diseases are uncomfortable topics. People infected with HIV are banned from government jobs, and students whose college learns of their HIV status have sometimes been expelled or pressured to leave.
China has about half the number of people living with HIV as the U.S., but roughly twice as many new infections each year. World Health Organization officials say stigmatization makes prevention efforts more difficult and have urged China to crack down on discrimination against people with HIV or those at risk for the disease.
Soon after the statement was put on the website Thursday morning, news reports and comments related to it began disappearing from China’s social-media platform Weibo and news portals such as NetEase. Weibo posts by China’s state broadcaster China Central Television and People’s Daily, the Communist Party flagship newspaper on the topic were later unavailable. The health authorities’ statement remained online.
