Chinese clinic denounced as cruel for taking three months to tell patient she had cervical cancer
- Patient from Jiangsu province needed chemotherapy and had her uterus removed after disease spread during delay in giving her results
- Health chief’s response that error was only ‘minor flaw’ and failure to apologise fuels criticism of ‘uncaring’ response
A county clinic in eastern China that took three months to tell a patient she had cancer has been denounced as cruel and uncaring by state media.
As a result of the delay, her cervical cancer metastasised and spread to her bloodstream which meant she had to undergo a hysterectomy and chemotherapy.
The clinic in Shuanggang, a town in Jiangsu province, said it only had one staff member handling patients’ results, but its failure to apologise and insistence that the error was only a “minor flaw in our work” prompted widespread criticism.
Zhang Lijuang, who is in her early thirties, had undergone breast and cervical cancer screening tests organised by the Shuanggang town clinic in May last year.
The clinic received the positive result from her smear test the next month, but she was only notified she had cancer in September, China News Service reported on Tuesday.
Shuanggang clinic explained that more than a thousand women had tests each year but only one staff member was responsible for handling the results.