Singapore legislation
Section 10
Section 10
Director may require information from healthcare professionals, etc.
(1)
The Director may, for the purpose of investigating into any outbreak or suspected outbreak of an infectious disease, preventing the spread or possible outbreak of an infectious disease, or treating any person who is, or is suspected to be, a case or carrier or contact of an infectious disease —
require any healthcare professional to obtain from his or her patient such information as the Director may reasonably require for that purpose and transmit that information to the Director; and
with the approval of the appropriate Minister, prescribe by order any general or specific measures or procedures for that purpose for compliance by any healthcare professional, hospital, medical clinic, clinical laboratory or healthcare establishment.
(2)
Any person who fails to comply with a requirement or an order referred to in subsection (1) shall be guilty of an offence.
(3)
A patient of a healthcare professional who fails to provide the healthcare professional or a person acting on behalf of the healthcare professional with any information sought from the patient that is within the patient’s knowledge pursuant to a requirement under subsection (1)(a) shall be guilty of an offence.
(4)
A healthcare professional must comply with a requirement under subsection (1)(a) to transmit information to the Director despite any restriction on the disclosure of information imposed by any written law, rule of law, rule of professional conduct or contract; and the healthcare professional is not by so doing treated as being in breach of any such restriction despite anything to the contrary in that law, rule or contract.
(5)
In this section —
Definition
“clinical laboratory”, “healthcare establishment” and “medical clinic” have the meanings given by the Private Hospitals and Medical Clinics Act 1980;
Definition
“healthcare professional” means —
a medical practitioner;
a dentist registered under the Dental Registration Act 1999;
a registered nurse or an enrolled nurse, or a registered midwife, within the meaning of the Nurses and Midwives Act 1999;
a pharmacist registered under the Pharmacists Registration Act 2007;
a person registered under section 14 of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners Act 2000 for the carrying out of any practice of traditional Chinese medicine prescribed under that Act; or
any other person providing any other healthcare service in Singapore.