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(g) To disinfect infected houses.
The District Plague Officer is responsible for all disinfection whether of vacated rooms or of vacated houses. A room is vacated when a case of Plague occurs in it; a house is vacated in which Plague cases have occurred both during the last and the present epidemic. A special assistant is allotted to each District Plague Officer to carry out disinfection.
(h) To vacate infected houses.
The choice of such houses or blocks of dwellings as require to be vacated should be made by the Committee in consultation with the District Plague Officer. As a rule no house should be vacated except houses in which a large or a repeated number of Plague attacks have occurred. The actual work of vacating the houses is entrusted to a special officer, Captain Betham. The duties of the vacating officer are-
(i) To see the house is vacated and closed and marked with the letter V.
(ii) To hand all unclaimed property to the Police or other authority.
(iii) To see that the inmates with their belongings are taken to the Segregation Camp. The time during which the persons evicted are kept in the Health Camp should not be less than 10 days. The District Plague Officer is responsible that all Evicts are brought back to their houses at the end of the 10 days or other appointed period of segregation. The District Plague Officer is further responsible that every vacated house, after disinfection, and with such alterations as make it fit for human use, is ready to receive its former tenants. As a rule no shop should be vacated. The premises should be disinfected, and comunication with the rest of the building be carefully cut off. Similarly, the workshops of home craftsmen-handloom-weavers, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and others-should not be closed. In such cases the bread-winners should be encouraged to live with their family in a camp at night, and to return to their workshop during the day.
(i) To condemn vacated houses incapable of improvement.
The condemning of vacated houses will be settled by the Committee in consultation with the District Plague Officer.
No house should be condemned until an attempt has been made to make the house or certain portions of the house fit for human use. With this object alterations should be attempted to secure sufficient horizontal and vertical ventilation. As a rule vertical ventilation can be best secured by cutting a four feet square opening through each floor, and horizontal ventilation by driving openings through each partition and over every door.