Hepatitis C epidemic largely untreated in Tennessee prisons
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Only eight of the 3,487 inmates known to have hepatitis C in Tennessee are receiving medicine that can cure the disease.
John Bilby should be dead by now.
Before September, the 66-year-old inmate didn't know about the hepatitis C that's slowly destroying his liver. Then, after 27 years in prison, they told him he had six months to live.
"He says I have (terminal cirrhosis of the liver) and without a liver transplant I will die," Bilby said in a letter to The Tennessean, referencing a recent conversation with a prison doctor.
Bilby's asked for treatment, but he's one of thousands who've been denied.
Only eight of the 3,487 inmates known to have hepatitis C in Tennessee prisons are receiving medicine that can cure the disease, caused by a virus that can lead to fatal liver damage. Nearly one in two inmates the state did test in 2015 showed signs of having hepatitis C.
Similar circumstances across the country have led to class-action lawsuits from inmates in three states. The inmates and their attorneys in those cases argue the state is failing to provide reasonable medical care by refusing to give the medications that could cure hepatitis C to most infected inmates.
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