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| State prison health care under scrutiny |
| By Rochester Democrat Chronicle |
| Published: 11/24/2003 |
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Inmates with HIV and other serious illnesses are lucky to see a prison doctor once a year, activists and Democrats said last Friday at a hearing attacking the health care system in New York penitentiaries. About 10,000 of the 65,800 state inmates are infected with hepatitis C and 6,000 are HIV-infected, a rate much higher than the general population, officials said. Yet prison health services - which are overseen by the state Corrections Department rather than the Health Department - feature inadequate and disparate care, they said. Handy Rayam said care is a crap shoot, hinging on where a prisoner is placed. Rayam, an HIV patient who spent eight years in prison for assault, said he saw a doctor twice in his four years in Franklin state prison near the Canadian border. But he visited a physician every three months during his three years in Woodbourne state prison in Sullivan County. State prison officials, who didn't attend the hearing, countered that Gov. George Pataki's administration has boosted spending on inmate medical services by 50 percent since 1995, even though inmate population fell 9 percent. The state has opened regional medical units and it extensively tests inmates for HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C, said Corrections Commissioner Glenn Goord. He also disputed the activists' claim about the number of hepatitis infections, saying while 9,000 are infected, only 150 meet hepatitis treatment guidelines established by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The system delivers "cost-effective delivery of medical services," Goord said. Some legislators are pushing three bills to give the Health Department oversight of prison health facilities, develop standards for care of HIV patients and distribute condoms to inmates. |
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