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| State inmate files U.S. suit over lack of hepatitis care |
| By Philadelphia Inquirer |
| Published: 05/13/2004 |
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A New Jersey inmate infected with potentially deadly hepatitis C has filed a federal lawsuit against the state Corrections Department and its medical contractor, contending that his disease was left untreated for a decade after it was detected. The suit by Jose Lopez, 49, an inmate at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, Cumberland County, is the latest to allege that New Jersey neither treated inmates for the liver disease nor told them that tests had found they were infected. Lopez, whose family lives in Lindenwold, was one of 421 inmates notified in July 2002 that they were infected with the hepatitis C virus. The state's mass notification came in response to an Inquirer investigation of its handling of the disease, which can destroy the liver. "The conduct of prison officials and medical providers was outrageous. Not to inform Mr. Lopez of a life-threatening disease is tantamount to watching a person having a heart attack and sit idly by," said Lopez's Philadelphia lawyer, Mark B. Frost, who filed the suit Friday in Camden. The Department of Corrections declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for the department's medical contractor, the St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services Inc., said he had not reviewed the lawsuit and could not immediately comment. |
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