A hospital in south China's Guangdong Province is under investigation over the bacterial infection of 18 women who had Caesarean sections there last year.

The women gave birth at the Huaqiao Hospital, the biggest hospital in Gurao Town of Shantou City, from August to November, an official with the provincial health department said on condition of anonymity.

A hospital in south China's Guangdong Province is under investigation over the bacterial infection of 18 women who had Caesarean sections there last year. [Guangzhou Daily]

"We received reports of several bacterial infection cases in October and ordered the local health authority to launch an overhaul of the hospital," he said.

But the public knew little of the scandal until the Southern Daily, a Guangzhou-based newspaper, carried a lengthy report on Monday.

The report said at least seven of the cases had been covered up, which the provincial health department official confirmed with Xinhua Tuesday.

"We were aware of only 11 cases," he said. "We sent an investigation team to Shantou on Monday and will keep the public informed of the result."

The hospital had been told to suspend Caesarean sections, he added.

Laboratory tests found patients were all infected with nontuberculous mycobacteria, or NTM, the same cause of a massive post-surgery infection in 1998 that affected 166 patients at a maternity and child-care hospital in Shenzhen.

One of the seven patients whose conditions were concealed was Wu Qin, whose wound has been purulent since she had a Caesarean section at Huaqiao Hospital on Aug. 31.

"I was told it was an immunity problem and received antibiotic treatment for months," she was quoted as saying in the newspaper.

Until Monday, Wu and six other patients were being treated at the hospital for up to seven hours daily.

Several other patients were told that their wounds had not healed either because they were too skinny or too fat, the newspaper reported.

Huaqiao Hospital was founded in 1995 with donations from overseas Chinese. It provides medical services to more than 300,000 people in town.