Eight kidney patients were confirmed to be infected with hepatitis C after receiving dialysis at a hospital in east China's Anhui Province, local health authorities told Xinhua Thursday.

The disease was spread through dialysis at the Shouxian County Hospital, said Li Shilin, head of the county health bureau.

The hospital was offering free health checks for its 95 dialysis patients, supervised by experts dispatched by provincial authorities in December last year, Li said.

Sixteen of them had tested positive for hepatitis C, but seven were proved to have caught the disease from other sources, and the origin of the disease in another recovered patient was not confirmed, he said.

All the dialysis patients infected with hepatitis C would receive free treatment at the county hospital, he said.

Hepatitis C is a potentially life-threatening form of the viral infection that can cause permanent liver damage.

Provincial health authorities ordered 142 medical agencies in Anhui to offer free blood tests for dialysis patients after 19 were found to have contracted hepatitis C at the Huoshan County Hospital in Anhui in November last year.

One month later, 15 infection cases were confirmed at Yicheng Hospital in Anqing City, Li said.

Perfunctory sterilization measures and unsupervised use of dialysis machines were blamed for the infection. All the dialysis clinics in Anhui had been ordered to improve their management, he said.