honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Thursday, June 5, 2003

'Obsolete' cancer-test law repealed

Associated Press

Gov. Linda Lingle has signed into law a bill repealing a 29-year-old state law that required hospitals to offer a cervical cancer test to female patients ages 20 or older.

The new law signed Friday requires cervical cancer screenings to be part of a new statewide comprehensive cancer-control plan being developed by the state Department of Health.

"The whole issue about the cancer screening in hospitals had to do with early detection," said Danette Wong Tomiyasu, chief of the Health Department's chronic disease management control branch. "That will be addressed in the cancer plan."

While the Health Department and hospitals supported repealing the old law, opponents said repealing it would affect poor women who don't see doctors on a regular basis.

The repealed law, enacted before Pap tests were readily available and were covered by health plans, was "an obsolete practice and statute," Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Rosalyn Baker, D-5th (W. and S. Maui), said during the legislative session. Baker, the bill's sponsor, is a 26-year survivor of cervical cancer.

"There are many women who go to the doctor, but there are also women who don't go," Tomiyasu said Tuesday.

The new plan will educate and inform, and "reach out to those women who don't get screening, especially those at high risk," she said.