An HIV-positive Kenyan waitress who was sacked from her job has been awarded £17,000 (US$33,570) in a landmark ruling against her employer and her doctor.
The woman, known only as JAO to protect her identity, claimed that she had been dismissed after her doctor told her former employer, Home Park Caterers, of her medical status. After a five-year battle for compensation, the Nairobi high court said that it was illegal to end a person’s employment because they were HIV positive — the first time such a ruling has been made in Kenya.
Local AIDS activists, who are still trying to remove the stigma attached to the disease, welcomed the judgment.
“This decision is going to go a long way to making employers more cautious when they sack someone,” said James Kamau, of the Kenya Treatment Access Network.
JAO, 45, whose husband died of AIDS, worked for Home Park for eight years before she was dismissed in 2002. She told the court that she had initially gone to the Metropolitan hospital to seek treatment for rashes and chest pains.
When she returned a week later Dr Primus Ochieng tested her for HIV — without her consent, she said — and passed the results on to her employer in breach of doctor-patient confidentiality.
Home Park, denied knowing that she was HIV positive, but JAO’s termination letter showed that she had been sacked on medical grounds. The company was ordered to pay her £5,650 in compensation.
The Metropolitan hospital and Ochieng, who denied handing over the medical records to Home Park, must pay £11,350. The court ruled that it was unlawful for a company to test a staff member for HIV without his or her consent.
It was also unlawful for a doctor to disclose a patient’s medical status to an employer, the court said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS