Privacy fear on central register

Tuesday 9th January 2007, 12:00AM GMT.

THE States have been accused of trying to introduce a central population register ‘by the backdoor’.

Health and Social Services hope this year to create a central index from the 220,000 records that they and the Island’s GPs hold so that they can call women in for routine cancer screening. The Medical Officer of Health believes it could save three lives every year through early detection of disease. But according to an internal States document seen by the JEP the Health database is just ‘phase one’ and will be a ‘key stepping stone’ to the creation of the so-called Corporate Population Index which will contain the names and personal details of every single man, woman and child in the Island.

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