In early January, funeral services workers in Tula showed up at a local man’s home and offered him assistance with the burial of his wife. This visit came as a shock to the man, whose wife was then recuperating in a nearby hospital, still very much alive.
As it turns out, the visitors had come on a bad tip: earlier that day, a nurse at the hospital texted them the name and address of a patient who’d died that morning. The patient had the same name as this man’s wife, and the nurse confused their personal data, when leaking the information to the funeral home (presumably for a bribe).
Tula’s district prosecutor announced in a press release on Tuesday that the nurse’s actions violate federal law and Russians’ constitutional right to privacy.
“This situation was possible thanks to the weakening of the medical facility’s management over the staff’s observance of medical privacy,” the district prosecutor said.
Police have presented their findings to the Tula hospital’s chief of medicine, Irina Rublevskaya, demanding that the facility take steps to prevent further breaches of patients’ rights.
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