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International Society for Infectious Diseases
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Date: Fri 29 Jun 2018
Source: The Orange County Register [edited]
https://www.ocregister.com/ 2018/06/29/immigration- inmates-in-victorville-get- more-scabies-chicken-pox- protesters-to-gather-saturday/


A federal penitentiary in Victorville that recently took in some 1000 immigrant detainees has a 2nd case of chicken pox and the number of people with a highly contagious skin disease has tripled in the past week, prison employees said [Fri 29 Jun 2018].

The prison has at least 38 cases of scabies among the new detainees, and staff continues to be concerned for their own safety and the safety of prisoners, said John Kostelnik, a union president who represents about 400 correctional officers and additional prison staff.

Earlier this month [June 2018], immigration authorities moved to federal penitentiaries approximately 1600 people believed to be living in the country illegally. That group might also include asylum seekers attempting to enter the country legally.

The biggest group was taken to the Federal Correctional Complex Victorville in San Bernardino County. A high number of them are not from Mexico but from countries like India and Afghanistan, creating cultural and language difficulties for the prison staff.

Civil rights advocates argue that the unauthorized immigrants have no place in a federal prison. The Trump administration has said this is a temporary measure until they can be moved to more permanent facilities while waiting to be processed, including for possible deportation.

The Victorville facility, which houses a high-security prison, 2 medium-security prisons and a low-security prison for women, has 2 physicians, one of whom handles the bulk of patient care.

Federal prisons have a policy of requiring a physician assistant or nurse practitioner for every 330 inmates, which would mean the Victorville complex should have at least 13 such personnel. Instead, it has 6 physician assistants plus a nurse practitioner at the women's prison, the source said.

With inadequate staffing, contagious diseases like scabies can spread quickly. To prevent that, prison officials in Victorville are considering putting everyone with scabies into a single unit, the source said. Overall, however, the prison "has no strategic plan to address health issues or crises while housing detainees."

[Byline: Roxana Kopetman]

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[The infection, acquired outside the US, was introduced by the migrant group, and reflects the poor hygienic conditions the migrants experienced during the trip from their country of origin to the United States. ProMED has previously reported similar situations from several European countries (see below).

The presence of scabies indicates that other infections seen under poor hygienic conditions especially the human lice borne infections: typhus (_Rickettsia prowazekii_), _Bartonella quintana_ and relapsing fever (_Borrelia recorrentis_) should be kept in mind in febrile migrants especially if human body lice are detected.

Scabies is most easily treated with oral ivermectin. - Mod.EP

HealthMap/ProMED-mail map
Victorville, California, United States: http://healthmap.org/promed/p/ 8848 ]