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the hospital without going through the town ; and it would be better if all 
communication with the hospital were made by way of the water so that it 
would not be necessary to have an approach on the land side. 
It is also of importance to reserve the hospital for the purposes of 
quarantine only and not to use such a hospital for cases of infectious diseases 
arising amongst the inhabitants. 
Provided the hospital is well isolated and employed only in case of 
quarantine, should a case be taken • to it from a ship, the Colony will naturally 
not be declared infected. 1 
It may be urged that it may be used very rarely, and that it will have 
to be looked after. That is so, but the initial cost is small, the annual sum 
of money necessary to watch and maintain it in order would be small, and in 
return the security to the Colony would be very great. 
A quarantine station should not be allowed to be erected without isolation 
hospital accommodation, for passengers in quarantine require as much protection 
as the inhabitants of the town. A suspicious case of fever occurring amongst 
the passengers in quarantine station should at once be removed by sea to the 
isolation hospital under bars. 
During the epidemic at Belize this summer Yellow fever developed in a 
passenger in quarantine station shortly after he left the ship, the patient 
having obviously been infected at Puerto Cortes, the port from which he had 
sailed. He was not removed, but placed under bars in the quarantine station 
which was otherwise unprotected and kept there till he recovered. I do not 
understand that the station was fumigated after his removal or when it was 
recognised that he had Yellow fever. Under such circumstances I am 
of opinion that a foreign nation might argue that quarantine had not 
properly been carried out in accordance with Article IX. of the Convention, 
and might have declared the port infected, although there might not have been 
any Yellow fever amongst the inhabitants of Belize. 
No risks can be taken with Yellow fever, and in this case there was a 
possible risk from infected mosquitoes infecting for a considerable time both 
attendants and passengers undergoing quarantine. 
5- — Alterations in the Quarantine Regulations to bring them 
up to DATE. 
The Quarantine Ordinance of British Honduras is dated 1894, and was 
founded, I am informed by the Colonial Surgeon, upon a draft recommended 
by the Quarantine Conference of 1888. 
Our knowledge of the methods of transmission of two of the most 
important quarantinable diseases, namely Yellow fever and plague, has 
undergone since that time a remarkable change. The change is altogether 
on the side of directing action specially against the agents which transmit the 
disease. So that action has been concentrated and made precise, and the 
loss of time and of materials and often the waste of life has been very 
greatly diminished. 
1 See West Indian Inter-Colonial Sanitary Convention, 1904, and Pan-American International 
Sanitary Congress, 1905. 
