Healthcare firm sues customer who ripped service

A leading private Chinese healthcare provider has filed a defamation lawsuit against a customer for spreading allegations about flaws in its health checkup services, stressing that routine annual examinations cannot replace clinical diagnoses for specific diseases such as cancer.

IKang Healthcare Group, which provides annual checkups for more than 8 million people each year, held a news conference on Wednesday in response to widely circulated social media posts from a Beijing lawyer questioning the effectiveness of its services.

The lawyer, surnamed Zhang, wrote in mid-July that she was diagnosed with late-stage kidney cancer that had spread to her spine in October, despite undergoing health checkups for 10 consecutive years at the company since 2013.