KCRA 3 — The state's efforts to stop the rapid spread of valley fever through two Central California prisons have been so ineffectual that it should stop placing prisoners there, a medical expert told a federal judge in San Francisco overseeing health care in the state's prisons.
In a sworn declaration, Dr. John Galgiani said the situation at the Pleasant Valley and Avenal prisons is a "public health emergency," the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Monday.
"Prison officials should be, but apparently are not, acting in a manner consistent with a situation where the lives of individuals are at substantial risk," he said.
Galgiani, a professor of medicine at the University of Arizona who founded a center where the disease is researched, said he recently reviewed records of four inmates at different prisons who died of valley fever, and found that medical staff had taken months to test for the disease.
Valley fever is a fungal infection that causes flu-like symptoms and can be lethal. It is caused by inhaling spores from infected soil, and is not contagious between humans.
The disease is found most often in the southwestern United States, with about a quarter of the cases in California and more than 70 percent in Arizona, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of cases has risen over the years and topped 20,000 in 2011, the CDC reported in December.
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has formed a working group with state health officials on valley fever, corrections spokesman Jeffrey Callison said. continue reading...
1 comment:
I worked there for less then a year. I never had any health issues at all before I arrived there. I moved into a room in coalinga and within the first month i was sneezing so bad i got nose bleeds. I went to a doctor and he put me on a inhalant (Steroid) to help. I said hell no and received a semi hardship transfer within a month to SVSP.
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