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Email blunder sends AIDS patients' names to 800 staff
Health department investigates

By Jo Best

Published: Friday 25 February 2005

A list which contained the details of 4,500 AIDS patients and another 2,000 HIV-positive people was mistakenly emailed to 800 medical staff.

The list was accidentally attached to an email by a Palm Beach County Health Department statistician and sent to hundreds of health workers who weren't normally granted access to it, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The department's tech staff shut down the email system within minutes of the email being sent, by which time an estimated 10 people had opened it. Additional reports put the number at 16 although it isn't yet known how many actually opened the attachment, AP reports.

The Health Department said the email was not saved to hard disc or sent outside the institution and those who had opened the email were reminded of their confidentiality agreements in interviews with department staff.

The county is currently investigating the blunder.