PLAGUE PRECAUTIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18424, 9 December 1921, Page 3

PLAGUE PRECAUTIONS

The District Health Officer (Dr T. M‘Kibbin) has communicated to us a number of suggestions for adoption as precautionary measures •in view of the outbreak of bubonic plague in Australia: Just now our aim must be to eradicate all rats within a 10-mile radius of every port in Otago and Southland, and to reduce them elsewhere. If you are within that area get busy, please 1 If you have tins for bread and jars for cheese and other foods use them. If not, get .them. Don’t leave rat meals about. Get a cover for your refuse tin. Burn as much meat and vegetable refuse as possible in the kitchen grate. That will help your council. Food store proprietors should be equally careful concerning waste foods. It is now a legal offence, for example, for a butcher to store scrap meat in containers such as sacks, which allow access by the rats, and prosecutions will follow negligence in this respect. Any person responsible for premises harbouring rats or being in such a condition as to be likely to harbour rats is also liable to a heavy penalty. Close infections are now being made. Don't assume you have no rats because they are not seen by day. Get the wife to go down the cellar at night with a torch, and then listen for noises. Starve the family cat. If you have a good terrier organise a rathunt, or get your boy to volunteer at the nearest grain store, butcher’s shop, or stable. Poison.—Meantime procure poison. You can obtain it by, direction of your local authority office. Stocks are held by _ the sanitary inspectors, Town Hall, Dunedin. A’ poisoning night will be announced later, when in - every household and food and grain premises poison should be laid. This will haye to be done with due safeguards. You will receive explicit directions through the press from, the local authority inspectors Sfarva the rats as much as you can meantime. The important thing is to work methodically and to alternate the methods employed. Further instructions will be given from, day to day concerning varnish traps and other killing methods. Killed rats should be burned. It any swollen necks or other abnormalities are noticeable, dip the rat by means of a pair of tongs into kerosene to kill fleas, and forward it to the District Health Office surrounded by plenty of paper and packed in a sound container