Medical Neglect Is the Norm in Women's Prisons
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- pokesmot
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more from News:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/103136/
Women inmates die and suffer from medical neglect in a prison system that is much more of a threat to them than they are to anyone else.My name is Janice Pugh. I was released from FMC Carswell [the only federal prison facility in the U.S. that includes a hospital for inmates] on January 10, 2000. ... The reason for me being at Carswell was for medical treatment. I have a history of lung cancer. ... The last six months I was coughing up blood, and a lot of it. ... There was sputum tests done and a test where they put a scope down your nose. Well, I received NO results from these tests. ... [Pugh went home to Alabama after her release; she had served 18 months for drug possession.] On January 20 at the Southern University of Alabama Medical Center there was a test done. ... On January 24 I was admitted. ... A bacteria was found growing in my lungs ... and a mass was found on my top right lobe. They done a biopsy today, January 31, 2000. This is just a few things I have to say and proof that it's true.
On March 27, 2000, two months after I received this letter, Janice Pugh died of metastasized cancer in a Mobile, Ala., hospice. She was 52 years old. She had served her sentence at FMC (Federal Medical Center) Carswell, near Fort Worth, Texas, because of her medical needs, yet her symptoms went undiagnosed and untreated there.
"We were told by the oncologist who treated Mama [in Alabama] that she was 'very neglected' at Carswell," said her daughter, Tracy Ingram.
I wish I could write that Janice Pugh's case is an aberration. It is not. For almost a decade, I have been writing about the Janice Pughs of FMC Carswell -- women as old as 80 and as young as 18, from all races and all classes, who have needlessly suffered or died from what a former Carswell doctor described as "medical mistakes, substandard care and unconscionable delays" in treatment.
Behind the nation's razor-wire fences, egregious medical neglect has been the norm for decades. But for the most part, this dark side of prison life is ignored by the mainstream media and lawmakers, and too often accepted by the general population as just another price paid by those committing crimes. The Carswell women's debt to society, however, shouldn't have included their lives.
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10ft
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10ft
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shine0854
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This story is telling the truth. The federal facility named is not the only place where this type of neglect is actually the norm. I spent three years in Julia Tutwiler Prison, the only womens prison in Alabama and saw at least two women die from medical issues. The problem of health care going to the lowest bidder is at the root of this issue. The gyn exam i was subjected to when i got there was a horrible experience. There is no light at the end of this tunnel as long as this country is willing to subject its citizens to incarceration for the nonviolent crimes that have taken the population of convicts to the levels they are at today.
- 1 year ago
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shine0854
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AveryMoore
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Negligence is negligence, a dereliction for which there is no excuse, including economic cleansing
Malicious neglect as homicidal negligence? Is there any difference between that mentality and the excuses made by the Nazis? Oh, right they called their gulags a "concentration camp" for dangerous or suspect minorities
- 1 year ago
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AveryMoore
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sotanewb
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Law agencies are not very sympathetic towards the convicted. Disturbing, but not surprising.
- 1 year ago
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sotanewb
