HIV patient info to be kept confidential

Health authorities in Hubei province have urged HIV-designated hospitals to ensure the privacy of HIV-infected people after some general hospitals allegedly declined to treat them after knowing about their status through the patient test results sharing system, according to media reports.

An HIV-positive person suffering from a cold went to a general hospital in Hubei for treatment on Sunday. The doctor refused to provide care upon discovering through his shared medical data that the patient is HIV positive, as reported by Dingduan News, citing Shen Long, an HIV care volunteer. The doctor said he did not prescribe medicine as he was worried he might prescribe the wrong medicine for the patient.

Shen added another patient was declined service at a hospital in the Jiangxia district of Wuhan on Nov 30 for dental treatment after a doctor found his HIV-positive diagnosis from another hospital.

The doctor said the hospital has limited sources for disease prevention and asked him to find treatment elsewhere.

According to the official website of Hubei Health Commission, in September, medical institutions in the province were asked to share results for 82 tests to avoid repeated diagnosis. The tests included those for HIV, COVID-19, hepatitis and syphilis.

Shen believes that the medical record sharing platform has increased the risks of exposing patients' medical information and the chances of medical institutions declining treatment.

He said an official with the Hubei Health Commission told him the platform had recently opened and that the authorities would take active action when loopholes were discovered.

The commission has notified designated hospitals to block such information and protect the information security of "people with special diseases".

An employee at Hubei Provincial Hospital of TCM told Redstar News that a doctor said that the patient, who allegedly had a cold, was an HIV patient as per the records. However, the staff said the patient declined to go through a blood test and only asked the doctor to give him a note saying he is sick so that he could ask for leave at work.

The doctor gave him the letter and did not prescribe any medicine, the staff said. He stressed that the hospital did not avoid treating the patient and it has treated several patients with HIV and hepatitis.

"The treatment is the same and there is no reason to turn down patients," the staff said.

According to the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the country had 1.29 million living with HIV/AIDS, with 110,500 newly reported cases, as of last year.

The incident triggered heated discussions online and became one of the most discussed topics on Sina Weibo on Wednesday.

Many netizens said that patients with infectious diseases are obliged to notify medical workers to get better protection.