US Denies Treatment for Imprisoned Mumia Abu-Jamal
WASHINGTON, DC (Tasnim) – The US administration has denied a request from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and journalist, in order to be taken from prison to hospital and receive a life-saving hepatitis C treatment.
According to Tasnim dispatches, Abu-Jamal, who is being kept in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania prison, is suffering from hepatitis C and not receiving proper medical care.
He was sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer.
After 30 years on death row, his sentence was overturned on constitutional grounds. He is now serving life without parole, and his supporters have shifted their focus to his access to medical care.
Abu-Jamal sued the state of Pennsylvania to receive anti-viral medication for hepatitis C after he was hospitalized in critical condition last year. Officials told him he was not sick enough to be eligible for the treatment, which has a 90-95% cure rate but costs $1,000 per dose, and is taken once a day for 12 weeks.
On Wednesday US district court judge Robert Mariani rejected his request, saying Abu-Jamal’s lawsuit wrongly targeted the warden and the prison system’s medical chief, and should have named the four members of the state’s hepatitis C committee instead.
Later, Abu-Jamal’s lawyers said the committee did not exist at the time the lawsuit was filed.
Even as the judge denied Abu-Jamal’s request he still found that the evidence and testimony presented in the case demonstrate that Pennsylvania’s hepatitis C protocol for inmates fails to meet constitutional standards.
Newly obtained evidence in Abu-Jamal’s case revealed that Pennsylvania treats just about five of more than 6,000 prisoners who are infected with hepatitis C. The details will probably be used in an unrelated class action lawsuit filed by other Pennsylvania prisoners seeking similar treatment for the disease.
Hundreds who have been moved to the prison infirmaries are “dying in isolation, often chained to their beds” says Noelle Hanrahan, a supporter of Abu-Jamal who monitors prison conditions and records his commentaries for Prison Radio.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hepatitis C has infected three million people in the United States, including more than 700,000 in prison nationwide.
