Members of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill ensuring officials have adequate statutory authority to protect the public from disease outbreaks. The bill is in response to the ebola outbreak in Africa.
Tom Martinec is the Deputy Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Health. He says House Bill 1058 cleans up and modernizes communicable disease statutes. He says the bill broadens current tuberculosis specific laws to include diseases like ebola and smallpox.
“House Bill 1058 also adds a new section to chapter 34-22 in section 33 of the bill that gives the Department of Health authority to seek judicial enforcement of a public health intervention order if doing so is necessary to prevent an infected person from transmitting the disease to others,” Martinec says. “And it ensures due process is afforded to individuals who are the subject of the order.”
Martinec says the Secretary of Health can issue the order, but a circuit court judge needs to agree. He says at that time the individual has an opportunity and right to be heard.
Representative Steve Haugaard spoke against the bill. He says there’s no clear right to council or a second opinion.
“I can’t see in a 21st century world how this person can obtain legal counsel or get a second opinion from a physician,” Haugaard says. “If he’s quarantined, what physician would want to expose themselves to that situation? If it is ebola, for example, who’s going to come and give a second opinion? Plus, how are you going to pay for that? These things are referenced specifically as at your own expense, both the second opinion and the legal counsel. So if you have a right that’s defined, but you can’t exercise it, it’s no right at all.”
House Bill 1058 passed through committee with a vote of five to one.