The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic submitted the initiative to the Assembly of the City of Belgrade for a street in Belgrade to be named after a great and worthy friend of our country and our city – Georges Mathé.
The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection warns all the entities that deal with processing data related to citizens' health status of the obligation to treat these data in the manner proscribed by law.
The Law on Personal Data Protection, and in particular the Law on the Protection of Patients' Rights, stipulate expressly that the data related to health status fall into the category of the so-called particularly sensitive data. The Law on the Protection of Patients' Rights proscribes the obligation of handling this data as confidential, and expressly prohibits the disclosure to other parties. Only informed written consent of a patient or a court decision can constitute exemptions from the duty to maintain the confidentiality of this data.
The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has initiated ex officio control procedure over the implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection in the City Municipality Obrenovac.
A large number of citizens contacted The Commissioner regarding the news, i.e. the statement of the President of the Municipality of Obrenovac, that during negotiations with potential foreign investors processing of personal data of many citizens carried out, including 55,000 medical records of Obrenovac citizens, and that the information was made available to the "Mei Ta" company.
In this regard, the Commissioner reminds that the processing of personal data is generally permitted only if it is done with the consent of the person whose data are processed, or if it is carried out pursuant to conditions of the law, in the proscribed manner and by the authorized persons.
As for data related to health status of citizens, specifically, they fall into the category of the so-called particularly sensitive data, and in addition to protection under the Law on Personal Data Protection, they also enjoy the special protection laid down in the Law on the Protection of Patients' Rights, which stipulates that data related to health status of a patient can be given to third parties without the patient's consent only by a court order.
After completion of the control procedure, the Commissioner shall, as usual, inform the public about the results and the measures taken.
The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has sent a request to the Government of the Republic of Serbia demanding from the Government, in accordance with its obligations pursuant to Article 28 of the Law on Free Access to Information, to use coercive measures to enforce the Commissioner's decision which ordered the Ministry of Mining and Energy to provide a copy of the initial memorandum of understanding signed between the public enterprise Electric Power Industry of Serbia and 'Amplex Emirates LLC' company to the applicant, a journalist of the The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
