An Act Providing for the Apprehension, Detention, Segregation, and Treatment of Lepers in the Philippine Islands

September 12, 1907

ACT NO. 1711

AN ACT PROVIDING FOR THE APPREHENSION, DETENTION, SEGREGATION, AND TREATMENT OF LEPERS IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

SECTION 1. The Director of Health and his authorized agents are hereby empowered to cause to be apprehended, and detained, isolated, segregated, or confined, all leprous persons in the Philippine Islands, and upon application of the Director of Health it shall be the duty of every Insular, provincial, or municipal official having police powers to cause to be arrested and delivered to the Director of Health, or his agents, any person alleged or believed to be a leper, and it shall be the duty of such officers to assist in the conveyance of any person so arrested to such place as the Director of Health or his agents may require, in order that such person may be subject to medical inspection and such other procedure as may be necessary to establish a diagnosis, and thereafter to assist in removing such person to a place for detention, treatment, isolation, or segregation, if so required by the Director of Health or his agents: PROVIDED, That all protests and petitions shall be given careful consideration and if the diagnosis is questioned, no person shall be permanently removed to Culion leper colony, or other place of segregation or detention, until the diagnosis of leprosy has been confirmed by bacteriological methods. Whenever the detention, treatment, isolation, or segregation of leprous persons shall involve the security of property and money belonging to or held by said leprous persons, the provincial treasurer, or such person as he may designate, shall act as guardian pending the appointment of a guardian by the Court of First Instance having jurisdiction in the province in which such person resides. ATICcS

SECTION 2. Whoever shall knowingly detain or harbor on premises subject to his control, or shall in any manner conceal or secrete, or assist in concealing or secreting, any person afflicted with leprosy, with the intent that such person be not discovered or delivered to the Director of Health or his agents, or who shall support or assist in supporting any leper living in concealment, shall, upon conviction, be punished as hereinafter provided.

SECTION 3. It shall be the duty of every police officer or other peace officer having reason to believe that any person within his district is afflicted with leprosy to report the fact forthwith to the district health officer of the district in which the case occurs. Any police officer or other peace officer who shall willfully fail to comply with the provisions of this section shall, upon conviction, be punished as hereinafter provided.

SECTION 4. The Director of Health is authorized to cause to be established hospitals and detention camps at such places as may be necessary, and where such hospitals and detention camps are established he may order the treatment of leprous patients in the incipient stage in order to attempt a cure, and he may discharge such patients as he shall deem cured or free from leprosy, and send to a place of segregation and isolation all such patients as shall be considered by him incurable or capable of spreading the disease of leprosy. The Director of Health may permit any duly qualified and reputable physician to engage in the treatment of lepers or any person supposed to have leprosy: PROVIDED, That such treatment shall be under the conditions and regulations prescribed by the Director of Health. The Director of Health or his agents may require from patients such reasonable amount of labor as may be recommended by the attending physician and the Director of Health may further make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem advisable for the amelioration of the condition of lepers.

SECTION 5. Voluntary helpers or friends living with lepers segregated under orders by the Director of Health or his agents shall be under the control of the Director of Health for a reasonable time and may be isolated from those free from the disease.

SECTION 6. Any person violating any section, or part thereof, of this Act shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine not to exceed two hundred pesos, or imprisonment for not to exceed six months, or both, in the discretion of the court.

SECTION 7. The public good requiring the speedy enactment of this bill, the passage of the same is hereby expedited in accordance with section two of "An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws," passed September twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred.

SECTION 8. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

ENACTED, September 12, 1907.