The European Court of Human Rights said in a judgment on Thursday that Finland had failed to protect the confidentiality of patient information and ordered the state to pay a nurse about 14,000 euros in damages and 20,000 euros in costs.

The nurse worked in a public hospital on fixed-term contracts between 1989 and 1994 and paid regular visits to the same hospital’s infectious diseases clinic from 1987, having been diagnosed with HIV. In 1992, it transpired that her colleagues at the hospital’s ophthalmic department had had access to her patient records. Three years later, her contract was not renewed.

The Strasbourg court found unanimously that the district health authority, by failing to establish a system from which the nurse’s confidential patient information could not be accessed by staff who did not treat her, had violated article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which says “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”.

STT