The LRF Newsletter

Number 16 April/May, 2000

What's in the News?

Front page

LRF Legal Adviser

Around the Centres

Know your rights

Government sued over Police mistake

Police clamp down on Brothels

Public health and you

Back issues of
the LRF Newsletter

Public health and you

Continued from last issue

If the person notified to disinfect and cleanse does not do so, he commits a criminal offence and is liable to a fine chargeable on a daily basis that the person fails to carry out the disinfection and cleansing. The Council in the area or the Medical Officer may cause such building and articles in the building to be cleansed and disinfected and may recover, by court process, the expenses incurred from the owner or occupier of the building.

In the event that the owner or occupier of the building is poor, the Council, or the Medical Officer may with or without his consent enter, cleanse and disinfect the building and articles.

The council may direct the destruction of any building, bedding, clothing or other articles which have been exposed to infection from any infectious disease or is actually infected. This direction is sufficient authority for a Medical Officer or Sanity Inspector or any person so authorised to destroy the same. The Council may with the approval of the Minister give compensation for any building, bedding, clothing or other articles destroyed.

The Council may provide a proper place, with all necessary apparatus and personnel for the disinfecting of bedding, clothing or other articles which have become infected and this may be free of charge. In addition the Council may provide and maintain a carriage for the transportation of persons suffering from any infectious disease to a hospital or other place of destination.

A Medical Officer of Health may order that any person suffering from an infectious disease or from a venereal disease in a communicable form, be detained in or removed to hospital or any temporary place until the Medical Officer or any Medical Practitioner duly authorised by the Minister is satisfied that he is free from infection or can be discharged without danger to the public health. Any person so detained who escapes or attempts to escape is guilty of a criminal offence and liable to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months or to both.

Any person who while suffering from any infectious disease wilfully exposes himself without proper precaution against spreading the disease in any street, public place, shop, inn or public bus, car, train, plane or enters any public bus without notifying the owner, conductor or driver that he has such a disease commits a criminal offence and is liable to a fine of three month’s imprisonment with or without hard labour or to both. The same penalty is applied to a person who gives, lends, sells, transmits or exposes, without previous disinfection, any bedding, clothing, rags or other things which have been exposed to infection from any notifiable infectious disease.

Any person who knowingly lets for hire any dwelling or premises in which any person has been suffering from on infectious disease, without having it and all articles capable to retain infection efficiently disinfected to the satisfaction of a Medical Officer is guilty of a criminal offence and liable to a fine. This is applied to any owner or keeper of a hotel or boarding house who lets any room or part of it to any person.

Any person letting for hire or showing for the purpose of letting for hire any dwelling or premises is under a duty to give true information to a person negotiating for the hire of such house as to the fact of the being or within six weeks previously having been in the house any person suffering from any infectious disease. If he knowingly gives false information he commits a criminal offence and is liable to a fine.