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Stories of those Affected |
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The following accounts are taken from testimony before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons on July 20, 2006.
Dr. Robert Cohen - Former director of Medical Services on Rikers Island in New York City and national expert on correctional medical care
When we got there [a prison in Ohio], patients were not being treated for pain, pain medicines were not being prescribed. Patients were not allowed to be diagnosed with hepatitis C. Insulin for patients with diabetes...were receiving their Insulin through the food slots in their steel doors, which had a glass -- you know, a glass view place and a food slot and receive their Insulin. I found this out when I was reviewing the medical record and the nurses are supposed to chart where in the body the Insulin is being given so there is a normal rotation so that areas of the skin don't become unable to absorb the Insulin, and I saw that everyone was getting it in the same place over and over and over again. And I asked the nurses and they explained to me that's what they were doing.
Sister Antonia Maguire - Catholic nun and Chaplain at Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York
We do not have medical services or anyone on duty in our facility from 11:00 at night until 6:00 the following morning. This in a facility where we have newborn babies, pregnant mothers, women with heart problems, many women with AIDS, no medical care at all.
Dr. Robert Greifinger - Principle investigator of the 2002 NCCHC report to Congress, "The Health Status of Soon-To-Be-Released Inmates"
[W]e need to have a quality of medical care behind bars, it's the same as the quality in the free world. There's no reason that it should be different. There's no reason that we should be treating hepatitis C differently behind bars than we do outside in the community. There was no reason for three or four or five years during the late 1980s when we were denying treatment to HIV-infected people after there was treatment available, and there's certainly no excuse today. And there's no excuse to do that for hepatitis C and there's no excuse not to look for and treat sexually transmitted diseases and other curable diseases.
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