There are many epidemics in California's State Prisons which could be controlled through control of unsanitary conditions in laundry and food handling especially.
The Center for Disease Control states that 8,000 news cases of Hepatitis are caught EVERY YEAR in California's prisons and are spreading out to the public. This is also true with Staph, T.B. and other diseases such as AIDS. SARS will be an instant crisis because inmates are already sick from other plagues.
Families of inmates, not inmates themselves, should be filing complaints with the National Center for Disease Control by the thousands.
It is the law that food servers should be medically screened yet they are not. And food porters deliver trays who are also not medically screened. Laundry is crammed so tightly into washers and dryers that it is not clean. The law says that laundry needs to be done once each week, yet it is not.
American Corrections guidelines state that inmates should be given a shower three times per week. If this is not happening at your prison, then you need to file a complaint and fight back!
Inmates cannot reach out for help without being punished for it. This means that family and friends must do all the fighting for them because no one else cares. They can tell you of dangerous unsanitary conditions, but you are the one who needs to originate the complaint outside of a prison postmark. You are a voter, you have power so please use it!
When 50 letters are received on a prison, the federal disease control agency will come in and do an investigation. The State hates this, but the health department's jurisdiction does not cover prisons. Everyone should file these letters now before more people die or only wish they were dead from life threatening diseases
Sample letters and the address to Center for Disease control are located here:
Sample letters to the Center for Disease Control to complain about sanitary conditions
John W. Ward, M.D. Editor
Epidemiology Program Office MS C-08
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30333
The UNION newsletter asks all subscribers to notify of deaths, suicides, medical neglect and unsanitary conditions in prisons and jails statewide. Anyone who caught a disease in prison should be participating in and support our class action lawsuit. They are entitled to damages.