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| AIDS deaths decline in Mass. prisons |
| By Boston Globe |
| Published: 09/19/2003 |
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A decade after the much-publicized deaths of several inmates with AIDS prompted criticism of the state's health care services for prisoners, the death toll in Massachusetts prisons has dropped by half, mostly due to fewer inmates with AIDS and better treatment for HIV, according to specialists. The number of prison deaths in Massachusetts declined from 36 to 18 since 1995 while deaths known to be related to AIDS dropped from 14 to two in the same period, according to the Department of Correction and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an arm of the US Department of Justice. But the victory against AIDS in prison comes as state budget cuts are making it more difficult for low-income residents outside prison walls to receive the drugs they need from assistance programs. 'I think there is no question that the prison system has dramatically changed the way they looked at HIV,' said Dr. Barbara Herbert, who served on a blue ribbon panel in 1992 investigating allegations of inadequate care for inmates with AIDS at MCI-Framingham. 'The medical care that people get in prison at this moment in time in some cases supersedes the level of care they get out of prison.' While Massachusetts has historically provided AIDS drugs to needy residents who could not afford them, recent budget cuts that sliced a third of the state HIV/AIDS Bureau's funding will probably force the agency to make difficult choices about who should be eligible for the drugs, said Rebecca Haag, executive director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts. And DOC is spending the money to buy them. AIDS drugs, which cost the state about $10,000 per inmate annually, have made up about 20 to 25 percent of the department's medical budget for the last several years. Between 1999 and 2003, the amount DOC spent on medicines overall increased from $6 million to more than $11 million, $3 million of which paid for a drug cocktail that combats AIDS for about 300 of the state's 9,150 inmates. AIDS drugs are not the only reason deaths have declined in prisons. The number of suicides also has dropped, from three in 1995 to one in 2002. Homicides also appear to have declined. In 1996, there were at least two murder investigations. But no inmate had been killed in the years that followed, until the recent slaying of defrocked priest John J. Geoghan. Yet, AIDS and the advent of new, powerful drugs are by far the largest factors explaining the drop in deaths, said Dr. Arthur Brewer, medical director of the University of Massachusetts Correctional Health, which provides health care for the state's prisons. Prison deaths skyrocketed in the early 1990s and began to fall in 1995 as protease inhibitors became available to the public. The Massachusetts statistics mirror trends in prisons nationwide. In 1995, a third of all deaths in state prisons nationwide were due to AIDS-related illnesses, but that dropped to just 6 percent in 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Because the rate of HIV-infection among prison inmates is more than four times higher than the general public's, the drugs had a more dramatic effect on the death toll in prisons. Massachusetts, where heroin abuse gave rise to the third-highest rate of HIV-infected inmates in the nation, has seen its percentage of known infected inmates drop from more than 5 percent of all inmates to about 3 percent. The state also became known as a leader in assuring access to AIDS drugs for all residents. |
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