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Tuberculosis in Prison: Balancing Justice and Public Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Robert B. Greifinger ,
Nancy J. Heywood  and
Jordan B. Glaser
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Extract

During the mid-nineteenth century the annual tuberculosis (TB) mortality in the penitentiaries at Auburn, N.Y., Boston, and Philadelphia exceeded 10 percent of the inmate population. At the beginning of the sanatorium era, 80 percent of the prison deaths were attributed to TB. As the mountain air was “commonly known” to be healthful, the first prison sanatorium was opened in the mountains near Dannemora, N.Y. in 1904. It served to isolate contagious prison inmates until the advent of effective chemotherapy for the disease in the 1950’s. Early antibiotic therapy for TB was such a great success that the public health aspects of TB in prisons remained dormant for the next 40 years.

In 1991, a correctional officer from Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York died as a result of multidrug-resistant TB. He had been posted to care for hospitalized patients, from whom he acquired his disease. This death, and the transmission of TB infection to health care workers in the same hospital, brought the nature and extent of modern inmate medical care into finer focus.

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Article
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Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 21 , Issue 3-4 , Fall Winter 1993 , pp. 332 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1993

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