Man sues medical centers for wrongly diagnosing AIDS

A man in Chengdu, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province who was misdiagnosed with HIV has decided to sue the two involved disease control centers after a seven-year “wait for death.”

Zhong Xiaowei, 54, said on Friday that he was seeking an apology and compensation from two Chengdu centers for disease control and prevention, thepaper.cn reported on Monday.

Zhong’s blood was taken for a premarital checkup at Chengdu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008. That sample was forwarded to Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a provincial laboratory, where the blood sample was tested and where Zhong was diagnosed HIV positive.

Seeking to hasten the onset of his death, Zhong refused free HIV drugs at a community hospital for the next seven years, the report said. He decided to “wait for death,” he told the Shanghai-based news portal.

Meanwhile he underwent 13 follow-up tests at Jinniu Municipal Center for Disease Coltrol and Prevention in the next seven years, without ever once receiving his results. It was only in 2015 that in a new test Zhong found he was completely healthy.

Since HIV cannot return to negative from positive, the original blood sample of seven years ago must have been somebody else’s, according to the provincial laboratory.

The error might have happened when Zhong registered for the test, the center said.

The Chengdu center also said it was deeply sorry about the case and hoped Zhong would resolve the process legally, according to the report of thepaper.cn.

The higher-level Sichuan laboratory meanwhile responded that they didn’t record blood owner’s information, they were only responsible for the result of the blood test, the report said.

The two centers refused to comment when reached by the Global Times.