Worker's Party's Gerald Giam has waded in to the public dissatisfaction over leaked patient medical data, by questioning why one individual can have access to over 14,200 records of HIV patients, and that coming from using a user's account, and not even as a system administrator account.
This came after MOH released a statement indicating that they had found a breach of data, and that they identified the suspect as American fraudster Farrera-Brochez. Farrera-Brochez, who is himself a HIV positive, helped himself to the data with the help of his doctor boyfriend, Ler Teck Siang, who also happened to be the head of MOH's National Public Health Unit from 2012 to 2013. As the head of the unit, Ler had access to the HIV registry.
Gerald Giam also questioned why the ministry, MOH, took more than 2 years to discover the data breach and thus only managed to inform those affected a full two years after they had their accounts hacked, as well as why it was possible end users can export out so many records at one go. In the intervening two year period, almost 2,000 of the HIV patients has since passed on.
MOH, and the Minister of Health, does have a lot to answer for.
