California Prisoners Forced to Deal with Threat of Valley Fever

The best way to avoid catching valley fever is to, naturally, stay out of the valley. But in central California's San Joaquin Valley, where the fungus that causes the disease swirls around in the arid conditions, the state's Department of Corrections runs eight prisons, and the thousands incarcerated within don't have much say in the matter.

California's Correctional Health Care Services (CHCS) spends about $23 million annually sending prisoners with valley fever to outside hospitals and providing them with antifungal treatments. There are even more costs, not included in that sum, for in-prison treatment and long-term care for patients who develop complications, such as meningitis, related to valley fever.

Most of those costs derive from the high rates of valley fever within the San Joaquin prisons. In 2005, the rate of infection just at the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga was 600 times the rate in all of Fresno County. That's because some of those most vulnerable to the disease—those with HIV, heart disease and COPD—are the incarcerated who have abused their bodies and rarely, if ever, been afforded proper medical care.

So beginning in 2006, California's DOC tried to reduce the disease's impact by shipping out those high-risk prisoners to other prisons outside the San Joaquin Valley. Also, a valley fever awareness campaign was launched in the prisons, and expansion of the Pleasant Valley State Prison was canceled,

Yet, the rate of infection among prisoners at Pleasant Valley has continued to rise, spiking sharply through 2010. "Additional measures," according to a 2012 report from CHCS, are now needed to control the valley fever threat, as well as the costs, both medical and legal.

As long as prisoners are housed where conditions are rife for valley fever, both state and federal governments will find themselves vulnerable to medical liability suits. The U.S, Department of Justice in August 2012, for example, settled a lawsuit with former prisoner Arjang Pariah, who contracted the disease while serving a drug sentence at the Taft Correctional Institute, for $425,000."He will require lifetime treatment." said Ian Wallach, Pariah's attorney.

Without shutting down the San Joaquin Valley prisons, which, stubbornly, has yet to surface as an option, some politicians have decided that, since they can't run from valley fever, they should do something to eradicate it.

Former state Senator Roy Ashburn had convinced fellow legislators to approve giving tax dollars to vaccine research with a simple cost analysis. The costs of treating valley fever among prisoners and guards, he argued, exceed the state's contribution to a cure.

"That's an issue that made it pretty convincing," Ashburn said, "On a cost-benefit basis, it made sense to contribute $1 million a year."

However, since Ashburn left office, those same legislators axed funds for the vaccine effort in order to balance the state budget, apparently choosing to bury their heads as deeply as the valleys themselves.

Source: Merced Sun-Star, www.mercedsunstar.com

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