A doctor cannot disclose any information about his patient, without his permission, even to his wife.

The NABH/DMAI Patients’ Charter on Patients’ rights provides the patients the right to confidentiality about their medical condition. 

The MCI Code of Ethics Regulations also requires a doctor to be discrete about patient information. Regulation 2.2 states that confidences regarding individual or domestic life that the patient entrusts to a physician and the defects in the disposition or character of a patient which may be observed during medical attendance must never be revealed unless required by the law. However, in some situations, a physician has to ascertain if his duty towards the society requires him to use the knowledge, obtained through confidence as a physician, to protect a healthy individual against a communicable disease to which he is about to be exposed. In such a situation, the physician should act the way he would wish another to act toward one of his own family in similar circumstances.