Why your medical status is not your employers business

Earlier this week I came across an article in one of our local dailies about a messenger who was sacked because "he was on the verge of dying". The employee was wrongly diagnosed as being HIV+ and this information was relayed to his employer leading to termination of his employment.

This raises the question of whether employers have the right to receive an employee's medical reports and whether an employee's medical condition should have any effect on his job.