Tuberculosis In Prisons

Improved Essays
Mass incarceration, underfunding, overcrowding in prisons, and unjust policies have led to the spread of infectious diseases (HIV, TB) across US prisons mostly impacting African Americans and Latinos. During the years of 1985-1992 the same time the United States was engaged in its war on drugs there were major outbreaks of Tuberculosis across the nation and many stemming from New York prisons for example. Before major discoveries in the field of medicine it was estimated that 80 percent of deaths in prison were caused by TB(Farmer pg.241 2002), but with the evolution of medicine also came the evolution of Tuberculosis’s ability to become resistant to antibiotics. Many prisoners were not receiving the proper treatment or diagnosis for their

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