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It's Your Health! Prisons: Threat to CommunitiesPam FademPrisons are a threat to the good health of our communities, and this affects women in particular ways. The newspapers sometimes scream out the most outrageous examples of bad care and denial of health care in prison: the woman who died of an asthma attack while waiting for a visit from her family at CCWF in Winter 2000; the man who died of starvation in Feb. 2004 in the Substance Abuse Treatment Unit at Corcoran; the man who bled to death when his dialysis shunt was poorly taken care of also in Feb. 2004 at Corcoran; and finally, Charisse Shumate, one of the founders of CCWP, who died in Aug. 2001 after years of no care and bad care for cancer and sickle cell anemia. Too many of our sisters- and our brothers- are going into the prisons relatively healthy, and coming home permanently disabled, chronically ill or not coming home at all, as the examples above expose. This is why a class action suit about the systematic lack of medical care was filed by women prisoners against the Calif. Dept. of Corrections (CDC) [Shumate et al. v. Wilson et al]. Bad medical care, whether deliberate or incompetent, is also a form of violence when it is part of the accepted day to day life of any community. Once people get that State number after their name, the CDC interprets it as a license to disregard and deliberately abuse the health of all women and men behind the walls. CCWP joins with health care activists on both sides of the wall in condemning prisons as a threat to the health of our communities. Many diseases such as HIV, Hepatitis C and tuberculosis disproportionately affect communities of color. When our family and community members are incarcerated these illnesses go untreated or are mistreated and spread rapidly inside the walls. When people return home again, this lack of care feeds the epidemics on the outside. The violence of the prison system itself is a serious health problem, from sexual assaults to the isolation from community (inside or outside the walls) that leads to an increase in mental illness and suicide, especially in the special housing units. Beyond the direct impact on the people who go to prison, the disappearance of thousands of women and men, particularly in communities of color,has a devastating impact on the children left behind and the ability of communities to survive. There is a window of opportunity right now with the public exposure of the brutality of the CDC, the appointment of the new oversight administrator and the hearings sponsored by State Senators Gloria Romero (Dem, LA) and Jackie Speier (Dem, SF). We need to make sure that similar attention gets focused on the prison system as a public health menace! This is a shout out to all health care workers, families and other people who are in touch with prisoners. We need to talk to each other, share information and work together on empowering our communities through peer health education and other health care strategies, as well as on building a public health campaign demanding health care as a human right for all people and an end to the mass incarceration of communities of color and poor people. Last updated February 14, 2005 06:42 PM |
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