PUBLIC HEALTH ACT : CHAPTER 295

“approved” and “prescribed” mean respectively approved or prescribed by the Minister or the Board or by the appointed officers or by the regulations framed under this Act, as the case may be;

“basement” includes any cellar, vault or underground room;

“Board” means the Central Board of Health constituted under this Act;

“building” includes any structure whatsoever, whether permanent or temporary;

“burial” means the burial in earth, interment or any other form of sepulture or the cremation or any other mode of disposal of a dead body, and “buried” has a corresponding meaning;

“child” means a person who is under or appears to be under 18 years of age;

“dairy” includes any farm-house, cow-shed, milk-stall, milk-shop or other place from which milk is supplied or in which milk is kept or used for purposes of sale or manufactured into butter, cheese, dried milk or condensed milk for sale;

“dairyman” includes any cow-keeper, purveyor of milk, or occupier of a dairy, and in cases where a dairy is owned by a corporation or company the secretary or other person actually managing such dairy;

“district” means, in relation to a Local Authority, the area which is under the jurisdiction of that Local Authority;

“drain” means any drain used for the drainage of one building only, or of premises within the same curtilage and made merely for the purpose of communicating therefrom with a cesspool or other like receptacle for drainage, or with a sewer, into which the drainage of two or more buildings or premises occupied by different persons is conveyed;

“dwelling” means any house, room, shed, hut, cave, tent, vehicle, vessel or boat or any other structure or place whatsoever, any portion whereof is used by any human being for sleeping or in which any human being dwells;

“factory” means any building or part of a building in which machinery is worked by steam, water, electricity or other mechanical power, for the purposes of trade;

“food” means any article used for food or drink other than drugs or water, and any article intended to enter into or be used in the preparation of such food, and flavouring matters and condiments;

“guardian” means any person having, by reason of the death, illness, absence or inability of the parent or any other cause, the custody of a child;

“Health Inspector” means a Health or Sanitary Inspector in the employment of the Government or of any Local Authority, and includes any person appointed by the Director of Medical Services to act as such within the district of one or more Local Authorities;

“infected” means suffering from, or in the incubation stage of, or contaminated with the infection of, any infectious disease;

“infectious disease” means any disease (not including any venereal disease except gonorrhoeal ophthalmia) which can be communicated directly or indirectly by any person suffering therefrom to any other person;

“isolated” means the segregation and the separation and the interdiction of communication with others of persons who are or are suspected of being infected; and “isolation” has a corresponding meaning;

“keeper of a lodging-house” means any person keeping an hotel or lodging-house;

“land” includes any right over or in respect of land or any interest therein;

“latrine” includes privy, urinal, earth closet and water closet;

“Local Authority” means—

(a) in the area of a city council, a Municipal Council, Township Council, such council;

(b) in any other area, the District Secretary for the District in which such area is situate;

“lodging-house” includes an hotel and any building or part of a house including the verandah thereof, if any, which is let or sublet in lodgings or otherwise, either by storeys, by flats, by rooms, or by portions of a room;

“medical observation” means the segregation and detention of persons under medical supervision;

“Medical Officer of Health” means the Director of Medical Services, any Government Medical Officer, any medical practitioner appointed by the Director of Medical Services to act as Medical Officer of Health in any area specified in such appointment, and the Medical Officer of Health of a city council, Municipal Council or Township Council;

“medical practitioner” means a person registered under the Medical and Allied Professions Act;

“medical surveillance” means the keeping of a person under medical supervision. Persons under such surveillance may be required by the Medical Officer of Health or any duly authorised officer to remain within a specified area or to attend for medical examination at specified places and times;

“occupier” includes any person in actual occupation of land or premises without regard to the title under which he occupies and, in case of premises subdivided and let to lodgers or various tenants, the person receiving the rent payable by the lodgers or tenants whether on his own account or as an agent for any person entitled thereto or interested therein;

“offensive trade” includes the trade of blood-boiler, bone-boiler, fellmonger, soap-boiler, tallow-melter, tripe-boiler and any other noxious or offensive trade, business or manufacture declared by the Minister, by statutory notice, to be a noxious or offensive trade;

“owner”, as regards land or any interest therein, includes any person, other than the President, receiving the rent or profits of any lands or premises from any tenant or occupier thereof or who would receive such rent or profits if such land or premises were let whether on his own account or as agent for any person, other than the President, entitled thereto or interested therein. The term includes any lessee or licensee from the State and any superintendent, overseer or manager of such lessee or licensee residing on the holding;

“parent” includes the father and mother of a child, whether legitimate or not;

“premises” includes any building or tent together with the land on which the same is situated and the adjoining land used in connection therewith, and includes any vehicle, conveyance or vessel;

“public building” means a building used or constructed or adapted to be used either ordinarily or occasionally as a place of public worship or as a hospital, college, school, theatre, public hall or as a place of assembly for persons admitted by ticket or otherwise, or used or adapted to be used for any other public purpose;

“public latrine” means any latrine to which the public are admitted on payment or otherwise;

“Sanitary Inspector” means a Health or Sanitary Inspector in the employment of the Government or of any Local Authority, and includes any person appointed by the Director of Medical Services to act as such within the district of one or more Local Authorities;

“slaughter-house” means the premises set apart for the purpose of a slaughter-house by a Local Authority; “pig slaughter-house” means the premises set apart by a Local Authority for the slaughtering of pigs; and “meat inspector” means the person employed by any Local Authority to act as meat inspector or other qualified person authorised by it to act in that behalf;

“stock” means and includes all domesticated animals of which the flesh or milk is used for human consumption;

“street” means any highway, road or sanitary lane, or strip of land reserved for a highway, road or sanitary lane, and includes any bridge, footway, square, court, alley or passage whether a thoroughfare or not or a part of one;

“trade premises” means any premises (other than a factory) used or intended to be used for carrying on any trade or business;

“verandah” includes any stage, platform or portico projecting from the main wall of any building;

“Veterinary Officer” means a veterinary surgeon in the employment of the Government;

“workshop” means any building or part of a building in which manual labour is exercised for purposes of trade.

[S 2 am by Act 34 of 1930; 9 of 1939; 27 of 941; 64 of 1953; 51 of 1963; GN 291 of 1964; Act 69 of 1965; SI 163 of 1965; Act 14 of 1966.]

PART II
ADMINISTRATION

3. …

[S 3 rep by Act 22 of 1995.]

4. …

[S 4 rep by Act 22 of 1995.]

5. …

[S 5 rep by Act 22 of 1995.]

6. …

[S 6 rep by Act 22 of 1995.]

7. …

[S 7 rep by Act 22 of 1995.]

8. …

[S 8 rep by Act 22 of 1995.]

PART III
NOTIFICATION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

9. Notifiable infectious diseases

(1) The provisions of this Act, unless otherwise expressed, shall, so far as they concern notifiable infectious diseases, apply to anthrax, blackwater fever, epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis or cerebro-spinal fever, asiatic cholera, diphtheria or membranous croup, dysentery, enteric or typhoid fever (including para-typhoid fever), erysipelas, glanders, leprosy, plague, acute anterior poliomyelitis, puerperal fever (including septicaemia, pyaemia, septic pelvic cellulitis or other serious septic condition occurring during the puerperal state), rabies, relapsing fever, scarlatina or scarlet fever, sleeping sickness or human trypanosomiasis, smallpox or any disease resembling smallpox, typhus fever, all forms of tuberculosis which are clinically recognisable apart from reaction to the tuberculin test, undulant fever and yellow fever.

(2) The Minister may, by statutory notice—

(a) declare that any infectious disease other than those specified in sub-section (1) shall be notifiable diseases under this Act;

(b) declare that only such provisions of this Act as are mentioned in such notice shall apply to any notifiable infectious disease;

(c) restrict the provisions of this Act, as regards the notification of any disease, to the district of any Local Authority or to any area defined in such notice.

[S 9 am by Act 9 of 1937; 51 of 1963.]

10. Notification of infectious diseases

(1) Where an inmate of any building in Zambia used for human habitation is suffering from any notifiable infectious disease, unless such building is a hospital in which persons suffering from any notifiable infectious diseases are received, the following provisions shall have effect—

(a) the head of the family to which such inmate (in this Act referred to as “the patient”) belongs, and in his default the nearest relatives of the patient present in the building or in their default the person in charge of or in attendance on the patient, and in default of any such person the occupier of the building shall, as soon as he becomes aware that the patient is suffering from any notifiable infectious disease to which this Act applies, send notice thereof to the nearest Medical Officer of Health;

(b) whenever any child attending any school, orphanage or like institution, or any person residing in any hotel, boarding-house or other like institution, shall be known to be suffering from any infectious disease (whether such infectious disease is specified in this Act or not) the principal or person in charge of such school, orphanage or other like institution, or the manager or proprietor or person in charge of such hotel, boarding-house or other like institution shall forthwith send notice thereof to the nearest Medical Officer of Health and shall furnish to him on his request a list of scholars or residents thereat, together with their addresses;

(c) every medical practitioner attending on or called in to visit a patient shall forthwith, on becoming aware that the patient is suffering from any notifiable infectious disease to which this Act applies, send to the nearest Medical Officer of Health a certificate stating the name of the patient, the situation of the building and the notifiable infectious disease from which, in the opinion of such medical practitioner, the patient is suffering;

(d) in any case in which a medical practitioner has been called in, the obligation to notify an infectious disease shall rest on such medical practitioner only;

(e) every medical practitioner who becomes aware, by post-mortem examination or otherwise, that any person has died of a notifiable infectious disease shall immediately furnish a written certificate thereof to the nearest Medical Officer of Health and shall also inform the head of the household or the occupier of the premises or any person who has been in attendance on such diseased person of the infectious nature of the disease and the precautions to be taken to prevent its conveyance to others.

(2) Every person required by this section to give a notice or certificate who fails to give the same, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding one hundred and twenty penalty units:

Provided that if a person is not required to give notice in the first instance, but only in default of some other person, he shall not be liable to any fine if he satisfies the court that he had reasonable cause to suppose that the notice had been duly given.

[S 10 am by Act 13 of 1994.]

11. Medical Officers of Health to transmit return of notifications

Every Medical Officer of Health shall at the end of each month and on a form to be prescribed, transmit to the Director of Medical Services particulars of all cases of infectious diseases notified to him during the month, and all information which he may possess as to the outbreak or prevalence of any infectious communicable or preventable disease in his district.

[S 11 am by Act of 1937.]

12. Regulations for the notification of infectious diseases

The Minister may, in respect of the notification of infectious disease, by statutory instrument, make regulations as to—

(a) the duties of owners or occupiers of land, the owners or managers of mines, employers of labour and all chiefs or headmen or others in regard to reporting the occurrence of any infectious disease;

(b) the duties of the person in charge of any school, orphanage or similar institution in regard to the reporting of such diseases or any other communicable disease specified in the regulations to the Local Authority;

(d) the duties of the Local Authority in respect of the keeping of registers and records of such notifications;

(e) the duties of Registrars of Deaths in respect of furnishing the Local Authority with notification of return of deaths notified with such Registrars;

(f) the forms to be used and the particulars to be furnished by medical practitioners when making such notifications to the Medical Officer of Health;

(g) the forms to be used and the particulars to be furnished by the Medical Officer of Health when transmitting returns and reports to the Director of Medical Services;

and generally for better carrying out the provisions and attaining the objects and purposes of this Part. Any person who contravenes or fails to comply with any such regulation shall be guilty of an offence.

[S 12 am by Act of 1937.]

13. Fees for certificates

The Local Authority where such is a city council, a Municipal Council, or a Township Council and in all other cases the Government shall pay to every medical practitioner, other than a Government Medical Officer, for each certificate duly sent in by him in accordance with this Act a fee of twenty-five ngwee if the case occurs in his private practice. For the purposes of this section, private practice does not include practice among agricultural or industrial employees or their dependants in cases where the employer pays to the medical practitioner a whole or part- time salary or retaining fee for his services to such employees or their dependants.

[S 13 am by Act 9 of 1937, 51 of 1963, 69 of 1965.]

14. Notices and certificates

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