frsrdg · GM04JO1 · 1999-01-01 00:00:00 — 168 ff. If a committee decides that young people are to be provided with treatment abroad, it is important that the committee makes a thorough analysis of how the treatment may be affected by regulations in the foreign country. The details of this case illustrate the problems that can arise. It is not always easy for a small social welfare committee to have the detailed knowledge of the complicated regulations that may be involved. must therefore be expected to acquire this knowledge well before the date of departure by contacting other authorities. An official at the divulged infor-mation that a debtor was infected with HIV - the question of a breach of confidentiality On 15 1998, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, . Pennlöv issued an adjudication with the following contents. In a complaint submitted to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, made the following assertions. For some time he had been subject to distraint by the . He is infected with HIV and therefore has additional costs for care and medicine. He revealed in confidence to P.J., a , that he was infected with HIV. dis-closed this information to one of Es friends, N.N., who had been prepared to help him to apply to have his debts discharged until she was informed of his condition, but has since then had nothing to do with him. E. also claimed that P.J. had subjected him to offensive treatment by asserting, for instance, that he was "using" his illness. In addition, E. complained about the way the had calculated the amount allowed him for personal expenses. I examined the files concerning the distrainment referred to by E. in his complaint. Their contents enabled me to conclude that there was reason to believe that P.J., who is a public official and therefore subject to my supervision, had committed an offence against the stipulations in 20.3 of the Criminal Code concerning the obligation to preserve confidentiality. On February 9 1998, therefore, to initiate an enquiry into such an offence and assigned , one of the senior prosecutors attached to the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, to conduct the enquiry. In the course of the enquiry, E. and N.N. were interviewed, as was P.J. after she had been informed of the charge against her of an offence against the obligation to preserve confidentiality on the following grounds. In and most recently during the Autumn of 1997, E. has informed P.J., an official of the at its office, that he is infected with HIV. This is information about the personal circumstances of an individual that is subject to secrecy within the enforcement services and it is to be assumed that the individual would sustain considerable injury or significant harm were it to be disclosed. During in , P.J. has through negligence revealed information about Es illness in the course of a telephone conver-sation with N. It was P.Js duty to preserve the confidentiality of this infor-mation as E. could be expected to sustain considerable injury or signi-ficant harm were it to be disclosed. did not deny the facts in the case. Some of the information that she gave during the interview, which took place on 1998, was as follows. She has worked at the since 1974 and has been a since 1980 or 1981. She has completed an in-service training programme that also covered the regulations about confidentiality and she considers that she is extremely knowledgeable about most of the legal issues relating to confidentiality. . E. had informed her about his illness several years previously, or in other words, she had known about it "for as long as he has been one of my debtors". She had not gained the impression that it was difficult for E. to tell people about his illness. E. had not told her that nobody else was to be informed. . From the information she had been given about N. by E. she got the impression that she was one of his close acquaintances and that N. was the person who supported E. and who had provided most of the furniture in Es flat. N. was going to help E. with an application to have his debts discharged. She herself had only had one telephone contact with N. During that conversation, N. had explained that she wanted information about the procedure to be adopted in applying for the discharge of debts. They talked about "the practical matters" and during the conversation N. said that E. was cured and was going to begin a new life. She then asked N. what she meant by "cured" to which the response was "from his drinking problems". That was when "through a slip of the tongue" she mentioned that E. had HIV or "weve been told he has HIV". When this happened, she was fully aware that this information was subject to confidentiality. However, she believed that N. already knew about it, not least because during a house visit to E. during the autumn of 1997, he had all the time "referred her to N. about everything". Nothing that had been said during the telephone conversation had led her to believe that N. was not aware that E. was infected with HIV. During this particular period, she was under a great deal of pressure at work because it was the time of the year when tax arrears and the like had to be dealt with. As laid down in the regulations that apply to this case in 9.19 of the Official Secrecy Act (1980:100), P.J. should have kept the information that E. was infected with HIV secret. In disclosing this information about Es illness to N., P.J. has, strictly speaking, contravened the obligation to preserve the confidentiality of this information. Therefore there is reason to take a serious view of what happened. In view of the information given during the interview, I find that P.J. acted from negligence but that this negligence is inconsequential and that there are therefore no longer any grounds for assuming that an offence against the obligation to maintain confidentiality has been committed. I am deciding therefore to terminate the enquiry. In coming to this conclusion, I have taken into consideration mainly the circumstance that P.J. had grounds for believing that E. and N. were very close to each other and also the course taken by the telephone conversation between P.J. and N. on the occasion when P.J. disclosed the information about Es illness. These circumstances - like the fact that E. informed her openly at an early stage about his illness - can be assumed to have given P.J. the impression that N. already knew about Es illness. I would, however, like to point out that P.Js actions were singularly inappropriate and that there is therefore reason to criticise her for disclosing the information concerned. I do not consider that any other action on my part is called for. What has transpired in other respects calls for no statement or measure of any other kind on my behalf. The case is closed.