Medical details found in skip

7:30am Wednesday 10th September 2008

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Records containing thousands of personal medical details were found dumped in a skip in Neyland last week.

Individually-stapled questionnaires from the Pembroke Dock office of a medical research company were found overflowing from two wastepaper recycling banks in Neyland on Tuesday.

“There’s been a balls-up, basically the people who were doing the removal got hold of stuff they shouldn’t have."

Jack Adkins, managing director

Names, ages, addresses, phone numbers and surgery details were included on many of the forms, as were details of medical conditions and drug usage. Some even contained religious details, personal opinions on treatments and questions about whether the respondent suffered from psoriasis, diabetes or HIV.

Others were questionnaires completed by doctors or dentists with details of their practices, the numbers of patients they treated for certain ailments, and whether those patients would be suitable for new products.

Many of the files were labelled Adkins Medical Market Research, a company which conducts questionnaires, mainly over the telephone, on behalf of major research and pharmaceutical companies.

The manager of the Pembroke Dock Adkins office, Ros Flather, confirmed the waste had been taken away during an office relocation and had been put into the skips by a local removal company.

She said: “It’s all information that is in the public domain anyway.

“It doesn’t bear any relevance, it’s of absolutely no use to anyone. The removal people may have thought that they were doing a good thing by having it recycled.”

But Jack Adkins, the managing director based in the west Midlands, was more alarmed.

“Obviously this shouldn’t have happened,” he said.

“There’s been a balls-up, basically the people who were doing the removal got hold of stuff they shouldn’t have.

“It is pretty old stuff, but we shouldn’t have got rid of it like this, we have Continued from page 1.

procedures to get rid of stuff securely.

“You wish you could put the clock back and sort it, but this happened.”

On being alerted to the problem, Pembrokeshire County Council sent a waste disposal team to get rid of the files. Emergency response driver Tom Goodridge was first to arrive.

“They wonder why there’s so much fraud,” said Mr Goodridge. “I’ve never seen these bins so full. You can put your hand in and grab handfuls of these files, there must be thousands in here.”

Pembrokeshire Community Health Council’s chief officer, Ashley Warlow, said the disposal effort was “scandalous” and one of the people whose name, address, phone number, surgery postcode and age appeared on one of the questionnaires – along with details about his diabetes and fungal infection called Onychomycosis – agreed.

He said: “I’m very concerned. It’s all personal details in there and anybody could have got hold of it. I remember being paid to do the questionnaire, and I was told it would be confidential. It’s unbelievable that they would just chuck it in a recycling bin.”

A spokesman at the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “This is something that we could definitely look into. This is very sensitive information and there is a risk that it could be used for fraud.”