STAND. COM. REP. NO. 315

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2005

RE: S.B. No. 1713

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Health and Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 1713 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO KALAUPAPA,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to promote improved patient care at Kalaupapa.

Specifically, this measure declares the Legislature's intent to ensure that all residents of Kalaupapa are treated with dignity, respect, courtesy, and sensitivity by the Department of Health. In addition, the measure requires the Department to ensure the residents' personal liberties, autonomy, and dignity.

Your Committees find that patient residents of Kalaupapa have endured many hardships and stigmas as Hansen's disease patients and deserve to be treated with respect. While the Department can assist in achieving this goal, your Committees find that the Department cannot completely ensure that residents of Kalaupapa are treated with dignity, respect, courtesy, and sensitivity in all of their life's interactions. Rather, the Department can only ensure appropriate treatment in the areas that it has control over and only for patient residents, rather than for all residents, of Kalaupapa.

Accordingly, your Committees have amended this measure to clarify the following:

(1) The Legislature's declaration applies to all patient residents;

(2) The Department of Health is to honor and uphold the protections extended under chapter 326, Hawaii Revised Statutes, to patient residents at Kalaupapa to the extent possible within their purview; and

(3) The Department is directed to promote, rather than ensure, the personal liberty, autonomy, and dignity of all patient residents at Kalaupapa.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Health and Human Services that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1713, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1713, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Health and Human Services,

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SUZANNE CHUN OAKLAND, Chair

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ROSALYN H. BAKER, Chair