Daniela Velázquez

Opinion contributor

Michael Postawko's arms ache every time he brushes his teeth. His joints hurt, he has frequent abdominal pain and severe headaches. His urine has traces of blood.

In the three years he has suffered at Missouri's Jefferson City Correctional Center, Postawko has been denied adequate medical treatment for hepatitis C. If left untreated, the chronic form of the disease can be deadly.

Postawko is one of three prisoners suing the Missouri Department of Corrections, its director and several doctors. They claim that the department of corrections medical policies routinely denied care to inmates with hepatitis C, left them in pain, and put them at risk of death.

And these inmates aren't suffering alone.

Nationwide, prisoners have higher rates of illness (both mental and physical) than folks outside of the system, but the quality of their care is frequently far worse. Prisoners overall have limited access to examinations and prescriptions, according to a 2017 report by the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative.

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In 2015, a 405-page report was filed after an investigation of the Illinois prison system. The investigation found the state's prisons were plagued by poor sanitary conditions and had inept medical staff. It described many troubling deaths, including that of a 55-year-old inmate who sought treatment for lung cancer but never received a proper diagnosis until nine days before he died.

In December, Willacy County, Texas, filed suit against the private company that provided services for a South Texas prison facility. The correctional center closed down after inmates rioted over, among other things, poor medical treatment.

Growing neglect over hepatitis C

Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for hepatitis C several years ago. When taken daily for a period of weeks, these drugs may provide a cure.

According to Postawko's suit, the Missouri Department of Corrections has "a policy or custom of not providing DAA drug treatment" per FDA guidelines for some inmates who suffered from hepatitis C.

At least 17% of the nation’s 1.4 million prisoners have been exposed to the disease, compared with about 1% of the general population, according to researchers at Emory University.

State prison systems are putting innocent people across the nation at risk for contracting this disease by recklessly creating an epidemic behind bars.

Hepatitis C is a contagious liver disease that ranges in severity from mild illness to a lifelong one that attacks the liver. It is the No. 1 cause of liver transplants in the nation, and it kills more people in the U.S. than HIV and dozens of other infectious diseases combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not treating hepatitis C is a form of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. It’s also a public health disaster. Withholding a lifesaving cure can be a death sentence.

Eroding our system of justice

This country prides itself in having a system that balances the scales of justice through a judge and jury. Allowing the government to kill its citizens slowly and painfully takes away from our collective humanity and erodes the value of our justice system.

The policy of providing treatment to some inmates and not others results in the spreading of diseases within prisons. The Missouri Department of Corrections treats only 0.11% of inmates who have hepatitis C, leaving those like Postawko in pain.

In Missouri, 10% to 15% of inmates have hepatitis C. More than 90% of inmates from state prisons will return to the community. The festering of this contagious disease in the prison systems has the potential to create a public health disaster in our neighborhoods.

When we allow the government to be willfully indifferent to the people in its care, that indifference carries over to everyone else in our nation. By neglecting prisoners, we're dehumanizing ourselves.

Daniela Velázquez is a strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, which filed the class-action suit.