From U.S. News & World Report:
Inmates and their advocates are pushing for legal and political fixes to fight hepatitis C, a public health problem experts say can't be solved in the U.S. overall without first tackling it within prison walls.
The hepatitis C virus attacks the liver and can turn deadly: Research shows it was associated with more fatalities in 2013 than 60 other infectious conditions combined – HIV and tuberculosis included. And though the disease affects 1 percent of the general population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prison prevalence is thought to be around 17 percent.
When infected and formerly incarcerated people re-enter society, they can spread the blood-borne virus through intravenous drug use with dirty needles and, less often, sexual contact. Linked to the opioid crisis, hepatitis C spiked by more than 200 percent in 30 states since the period 2010-2014, Yale University researchers note in a 2018 follow-up article to a landmark study they published two years earlier. Continue reading >>>
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