Williams Poto: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 06 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:729. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Kia orana. It gives me pleasure to rise to take a call on the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill in its first reading. It will come to the Health Committee for discussion which is great. I am also a member of that committee and I look forward to doing some further work on it.Firstly I just want to talk about the timeliness of this bill. Obviously there is a lot of public interest around the notification of infectious diseases with the recent events that have happened overseas around the Ebola virus. So I think it is very timely that we are looking at the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill which I understand from my colleague the Hon Annette King was really a piece of work that started some 7 years ago. So it is great that we have finally got this into the debating chamber.I want to start by looking at the increase in the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable. I spent a little bit of time today looking through the Ministry of Health’s website for the current list of notifiable infectious diseases. Obviously on that list are things like H5N1 or avian flu the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus and Ebola in terms of the viral haemorrhagic fevers. It is really interesting that this is obviously a list of notifiable diseases that changes and grows as the needs demand.On this list it is very interesting that it talks about hydatids disease. I do not know whether many of you know this but I recall as a younger person—a much younger person—that we used to have to take our dog to the dosing centre to have it treated for hydatids. I was talking to a young colleague of mine today Kurt McLauchlan about hydatids and having to take the dog along to the hydatids treatment centre to get him dosed. He did not have a clue what I was talking about. It was quite bizarre. My point about that is that times change and the way we treat diseases and the treatments available change as well. So I am very pleased to see that this bill makes provision for allowing the notification of other infectious diseases as we become aware of them as they become apparent in our communities and as our ability to treat them occurs.I ask myself the question: what is the purpose of updating this list of infectious diseases that are notifiable? And it is obvious that the reason is that as we become a more global society as we travel the world more the issues around diseases becoming more problematic for our populations and progressing around the globe become more apparent. We do need some other tools to deal with ensuring our population stays safe and healthy. This bill makes a very salient point around the traceability of contacts of people who are exposed to infectious diseases or who have contact with others. It gives some very clear directions to medical officers of health to make public health orders through the District Court.In light of the recent events that have occurred in the United States for example discussion about what is required for public safety has to be balanced against what is reasonable in order for people to be able to carry on with their lives normally. I know that in terms of what has happened around the recent Ebola events of course many of the issues that have occurred have been around breaches of standard infection control procedures and the measures that are required for specific diseases. This bill talks about the medical officer of health being able to give certain directions and those directions of course are that the individual who is infected must participate in counselling and must refrain from carrying out specific activities. There are restrictions about where the individual may go and with whom they may associate where they are specified to reside and who may be required to supervise them.The bill also provides for adding some other notifiable infectious diseases to the list. We have already heard that that includes gonorrhoeal infection HIV and syphilis and that means that we will also be able to collect information on and track the prevalence of these diseases better. Also under the provisions of this bill around the contact traceability of folk exposed to these diseases there is a very important provision around ensuring that the information of the individual is kept private because one of the barriers to people coming forward when they are infected is the fact that they will be exposed to public scrutiny. So it is really important to note that one of the important provisions is around ensuring that the information on these individuals is kept private.The third aspect of this bill which is very important relates to the use of artificial tanning providers and services. We are talking about sunbeds and other UV tanning services not being able to be provided to people under the age of 18 unless by a specific prescription. We have had voluntary regulation in place up until now and that does not seem to have had an awful lot of uptake. Many of the services have not complied. Given our attitude in this country to the outdoors we would do well to ensure that when we are exposed to sunbeds and tanning clinics which provide a very heavy dose of UV light in a short period of time—it is quite an intense light. In this country given that so much of our recreation is in the outdoors we are exposed to an awful lot of UV light anyway.I am reminded of a story that a friend of mine talks about where every summer he exposes his children to at least half an hour to an hour of sunlight in the summertime before he puts sunblock on them because he wants them to brown up before they go out and play. I think our attitudes in this country towards exposure to sunlight and UV light are not in line with the detrimental effects that overexposure can cause. We do spend a lot of time in the summer outside in the sun. Often our children are running around with their unprotected skin. We often do not think to put sunblock on. We have a culture in this country around it being permissible to tan and even to burn and that is not good in terms of our rates of skin cancer.In Australia on a visit recently I had the chance of visiting some health organisations that talked about what employers have in place in terms of their employees who work out in the sunshine. They provide personal protection equipment for their employees that includes long-sleeved shirts and long trousers. If those employees were here in New Zealand they would generally be out in the sun working in all sorts of weather in shorts and T-shirts. So the Australians have taken a much more useful approach I believe to supporting workers and just being really smart about being out in the sun. We should match that real attention around being out in the sun and exposure to UV light. It would be really useful in terms of going to sunbeds and tanning clinics if we make some regulation around ensuring that our young people are not overexposed to UV light.Just to sum up Annette King was involved I think in the introduction of this legislation in 2007 and it has taken the Government a long time to get this bill into the debating chamber. I am sure that the Government takes infection control seriously. I believe that responding to pressure from Kiwis in relation to recent events regarding Ebola has potentially pushed this bill into the House but I look forward to having this bill come to the Health Committee. Thank you.