Research has shown that HIV-positive patients sometimes refuse to take precautionary measures against sexual transmission as well as to notify their sexual partner(s) of their status. Faced with this issue, physicians find themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea, as they are forced to choose between honouring their duty of professional confidentiality and protecting their patients’ partner(s). A recent advice of the Belgian Medical Council states that physicians can exceptionally and under certain conditions invoke necessity to breach confidentiality and inform partners of HIV infected patients who refuse to take precautions against transmission. The BMC has not always acknowledged that other values, e.g. third parties’ health, could take precedence over confidentiality. Right up until 2002 several recommendations emphasized that physicians should instil confidence in their patients by guaranteeing absolute confidentiality, that they should urge seropositive people to notify their source(s) of infection as well as the persons that they themselves have potentially infected and that physicians should advise seropositive people on appropriate prophylactics. On December 16, 2000 the BMC explicitly stated that the oath of confidentiality does not allow physicians to acquaint partners of HIV patients with the patients’ diagnose if the latter do not agree to it. This article will sketch the ethical evolution on this account from 1987 up to now. Furthermore, it will examine whether or not the BMC’s point of view corresponds to the applicable substantive criminal law provisions and whether or not partner notification could also be upheld for other sexually transmissible infections.