March 11, 2014, Kamayani Bali Mahabal aka Kracktivist

 

 

 

200 px

200 px (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) identified health
and health related development schemes as a “killer application” for
UID in the form of a unique health identification number. The UID
Working Paper on public health sets out what it calls “killer
application” to provide citizens an incentive to obtain a UID in order
to meet health needs. What a horrendous and violent language for
healing ?

 

The working paper on UID and Health
highlights the fact that  India lacks good-quality health data  and
also  vital statistics.  Hence  The UID project  should come from
integrated routine health system and not adhoc surveys. But how is the
UID to rectify this?  We need to  go to the root of the problem which
is why people are  avoiding the public health system, ? They are doing
so because of – unavailability of drugs, doctors,  inconvenient hours,
rude  staff in hospitals and health centers l,  having to pay for
services, which they never get . Unless these issues are first solved
,  the health system data quality cannot be improved.  And The UID
Number cannot do anything about it .

 

In our country there many diseases  that still continue to bear a
stigma , the UID scheme has the unique potential of increasing stigma
by  breaching the anonymity of health data collected. It thus violates
the heart of the  medical encounter, namely confidentiality. By making
this information potentially available to employers and insurance
companies, the scheme bodes further gross violations of health
rights.An insurance company and a hospital can merge databases. If you
have AIDS or TB, they can bump up your premium, or refuse you cover.

 

Lets take an example –  Ms  X visits a Clinic. At 10.00 am her UID
data and fingerprint is used for verification.Now, with UID will be a
series of other data associated with that visit of Ms X, and it will
be available in the audit trail. It will not take long enough to know,
that she had visited a sexual health clinic and how many times , then
anyone can infer  anything, Some things are not necessary for medical
history of Ms X but are being are being recorded and store in an
accessible way to various people,and it infringes upon confidentiality
and privacy of Ms X .

 

It is envisioned  that health related transactions and the associated
identifying information will be aggregated by a wide variety of health
care providers, including family physicians, consultants, pathology
laboratories, radiology clinics, hospitals, primary health centres
etc. Hence, UID scheme has the unique potential of increasing stigma
by breaching the anonymity of health data collected. It thus violates
the heart of the medical encounter, namely confidentiality. By making
this information potentially available to employers and insurance
companies, the scheme bodes further gross violations of health rights.
It is this reason above all that persuaded many countries in Europe
not to accept such schemes.

 

The UID system is prone to function creep, whereby information can be
used for a
secondary purpose that goes beyond the primary purpose of collection.
In addition, using the UID, intelligence agencies can profile
individuals by analyzing patterns of behaviours  across various
datasets (health records, bank records, air travel records etc.).
Significant  security risks include insider abuse, spoofing,
tampering, hacking, possibility of easy  manipulation without
detection and access control. infallible, especially when people are
in an unconscious state. The UID database has to be accessible over
networks in real time, if networks fail or become unavailable, the
entire identification system may collapse, this can have fatal effects
in the healthcare .

 

Given the significant potential for misuse of data, human rights
violations and breach of confidentiality of health information, one
hopes that the Ministry of Health will restrain its “excitement” and
undertake a rigorous analysis of the costs and risks of the scheme
before providing “material support” to the UID project. Or is this
expecting too much from a Ministry that routinely betrays people?

 

READ MORE EXPOSE  BELOW

 

UID excludes 1.4 million children in India #Aadhaar #Disability

 

Coercive Politics of UID and Scholarships

 

IS UID A MAGIC NUMBER ?

 

India- Are we being made Guinea Pigs ? #UID

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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