California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Failure To Treat Hepatitis C Among Prisoners
A class action lawsuit has been filed against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in Los Angeles today. The lawsuit has been filed by the Los Angeles firm of Khorrami, Pollard & Abir. The lawsuit charges that the CDCR is wrongly excluding thousands of inmates from liver biopsies and anti-viral treatment and allowing their disease to progress to more advanced stages of liver damage. The lawsuit will require the CDCR to provide thousands of inmates suffering from Hepatitis C with the proper diagnostic testing and treatment that they are currently being denied.
Hepatitis C is now an epidemic in California prisons as about 40% of the approximately 190,000 inmates in California prisons are infected. The standard of care as set by the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health and most medical practitioners requires that patients with Stage II Hepatitis be offered treatment. However, the CDCR requires inmates to develop a more advanced stage of Hepatitis C before offering them antiviral treatment. At these more advanced stages, treatment is less likely to succeed. Moreover, many California inmates do not receive even the liver biopsies necessary to determine the stage of their disease. Hepatitis C, if not treated properly, can bring various diseases like cirrhosis, liver failure, and cancer of the liver.
The case has been filed on behalf of lead plaintiff, Kevin Jackson, currently an inmate at the California State Prison at Solano and the name of the defendant is Robin Dezember, the Director of the Division of Correctional Health Care Services who is responsible for establishing health care policies for the prison system in California.
Hepatitis C is a serious viral infection of the liver, spread by contamination with blood from infected persons that occurs through illicit intravenous drug use, tattoos, or contaminated therapeutic blood products. There are about six genetic strains of Hepatitis C. Fortunately, good and effective treatment is available with a combination of two drugs, ribavirin and interferon.
Source: marketwire
Filed under Class Action, General Law, Medical Malpractice
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July 30th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Hello. Do you have a glossary of terms for the Depmt. of Corrections and Rehabilitation in Spanish or any related terms in Spanish?
Thank you,
Adan Negrete
September 12th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Re: Hep C class action law suit:
majority of inmates will continue to use drugs when released, thus pointlesss in offering treatment. also, they continue to tatoo and use drugs in prison. On a daily basis, I see inmates with new tatoos, abscesss from skin popping. They all say, this is the last time, but it never is.
They take no responsibility for their actions, including own health, it is the entitlement mentality. Inmates in California get great healthcare. In fact, great place to go if you have health problem and have no insurance. Better care than most insurance plans. Also, free dental. Mexicans are waving a flag at the border to get in for health care. Do some more research. Check out how many surgeries, procedures, specialty appointments are executed every day in all the prisons. How much medication is dispensed (and mostly sold or traded by inmates). It would be thousands. Inmates are in bad health when they arrive. They go out in better health. We save lives. But people like you only report the bad.