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364 4. The notification and particulars contemplated in Articles 1 and 2 shall be followed by further communications sent regularly so as to keep the governments informed of the progress of the epidemic.

These communications, which shall be sent at least once a week and shall be as complete as possible, shall indicate more particularly the precautions taken to prevent the spread of the disease.

They shall specify: 1 The prophylactic measures applied with regard to sanitary or medical inspection, to isolation, and to disinfection; 2 the measures enforced upon the departure of vessels to prevent the exportation of the disease, and especially, in the case contemplated under No. 4 of Article 2 above, the measures taken against rats.

5. The prompt and faithful execution of the foregoing provisions is of prime importance.

The notifications are of no real value unless each government is itself opportunely informed of cases of plague and cholera and of doubtful cases occurring in its territory. It can not therefore be too strongly recommended to the various governments that they make compulsory the announcement of cases of plague and cholera and that they keep themselves informed of any unusual mortality among rats and mice, especially in ports.

6. It is understood that neighboring countries reserve the right to make special arrangements with a view to organizing a service of direct information among the heads of frontier departments.

7. The notification of a single case of plague or cholera shall not involve the application, against the territorial area in which it has occurred, of the measures prescribed in Chapter II hereinbelow.

However, when several unimported cases of plague have appeared or when the cholera cases become localized, the area shall be declared contaminated.

8. In order to limit the measures to the stricken regions alone, the governments shall only apply them to arrivals from the contaminated areas.

By the word area is meant aportion of territory definitely specified in the particulars which accompany or follow the notification; for instance, a province, a government, a district, a department, a canton, an island, a commune, a city, a quarter of a city, a village, a port, a polder, a hamlet, etc., whatever be the area and population of these portions of territory.

However, this restriction to the contaminated area shall only be accepted upon the formal condition that the government of the contaminated country take the necessary measures 1 to prevent the exportation of the articles enumerated under Nos. 1 and 2 of Article 12 and coming from the