Wife wins case against GPs who did not disclose husband’s HIV status

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7402.1286-h

BMJ 2003;326:1286 (14 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7402.1286-h

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Wife wins case against GPs who did not disclose husband’s HIV status

Sydney Christopher Zinn

In a landmark case about patient confidentiality, two GPs in Australia have been successfully sued for breach of contract and for negligence for failing to ensure that a man who tested positive for HIV told his wife about the result.

The woman, known as PD and who contracted the infection, has been awarded $A720 000 (£288 000; $US473 400 ; €404 200) by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, which found that the doctors should not have assumed she would have been informed (24 May, p 1107).

The 28 year old woman and the man from Ghana were tested together for HIV in November 1998 at a medical centre in suburban Sydney before getting married and having unprotected sex.

The GPs, Dr Nicholas Harvey and Dr King Weng Chen, claimed they told the man to inform his wife and could not have foreseen he would . . . [Full text of this article]

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Patient confidentiality challenged over HIV test results: Christopher Zinn
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