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| Prison officials test and isolate inmate with leprosy signs |
| By Today's Sunbeam |
| Published: 05/25/2005 |
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A 19-year-old inmate at the Garden State Youth Correctional is in isolation after spending months with an apparent case of leprosy, prison officials said Tuesday. While the case remains open, the head doctor in the New Jersey Department of Corrections said three tests so far have pointed to Hansen's disease, or leprosy, as the cause of his illness. His identity remained unknown Tuesday; sources said he entered the Yardville institution in January 2004 to start serving a 41-month sentence for robbery. "It's not as rare as most people think," DOC's director of clinical services Ralph P. Woodward said of the disease, which conjures up Biblical images and pictures of disfigured sufferers sequestered into colonies. "It never really went away, it's still around. With modern antibiotics it's easily treated. But in New Jersey it is an exotic diagnosis." The first signs of the disease cropped up May 13 after a rash the man had proved untreatable after several months, a DOC spokesman said. He was transferred this weekend to an isolation chamber at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where officials said he is undergoing antibiotic treatment and is no longer contagious. |
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