Medical confidentiality yields to third-party health risk when disclosure is necessary to protect life, health, and privacy interests.

Medical confidentiality and the right to privacy are not absolute where disclosure is necessary to protect an identifiable third party from a serious communicable health risk. The SC stated that ethical duties permit disclosure when public interest and another person's right to life and health require it, and that a person with a communicable venereal disease cannot insist on an unqualified right to marry if the union may expose the prospective spouse to infection. In that context, disclosure of the appellant's HIV-positive status was held justified, there was no breach of confidentiality or privacy, and the claim for damages failed.

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Issues: Whether disclosure of the appellant's HIV-positive status by the medical authorities violated the duty of confidentiality or the right to privacy, and whether such disclosure was justified to protect the prospective spouse from a serious health risk.

Analysis: The duty of confidentiality in the doctor-patient relationship is recognised in medical ethics and professional conduct, but it is not absolute. The applicable ethical code permits disclosure in circumstances where public interest or protection of others' health so requires, including a serious and identifiable risk to a third party. The right to privacy, though protected under Article 21, is also not absolute and may yield where another person's fundamental right to life and health is directly endangered. The Court further held that a person suffering from a communicable venereal disease cannot insist on an unqualified right to marry, since marriage in such a condition may expose the prospective spouse to infection and may even attract penal consequences under the law relating to negligent or malignant spread of disease. In that setting, silence by the medical authorities would have made them complicit in a foreseeable harm to the prospective spouse.

Conclusion: The disclosure did not violate the duty of confidentiality or the appellant's right to privacy. The appellant's claim for damages failed, and the appeal was dismissed.

Ratio Decidendi: The duty of medical confidentiality and the right to privacy are subject to limitation where disclosure is necessary to protect an identifiable third party from a serious communicable health risk and to advance the competing right to life and health.

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