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At least 12 people died of diabetes in Georgian prisons and in prisons where they had no treatment that would have allowed them to stay healthy over the past decade.
Their blood sugar was multiplied by several as normal, they were categorically refused insulin and their symptoms were dismissed by guards and staff members who deduced the inconsistency and days of vomiting from addiction or mental illness.
Some 2.3 million Americans are confined to the huge US penitentiary system, where their health is often neglected and where care is extremely expensive.
For at least 12 men and women, the prison was a death sentence, unrelated to their crimes, but as their treatable condition was ignored, a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation was revealed.
Willie Whaley died at the age of 31 in the State Prison for Diabetic Ketoacidosis (AKD) of Georgia. He received insulin for two days and then was denied injections after having a positive result with methamphetamine while he was at the prison's medical center.
The United States has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world.
In fact, there are about as many Americans in prisons and other penitentiaries as in all of Botswana (and about twice as many as those living in Cyprus).
But as the penitentiary system expands and develops, the people who live there are no longer cared for, and their negligence not only harms the prisoners, it begins to impact the health of the population in general.
Rates of mental and chronic illness are much higher among incarcerated people than in the general population.
At admission, people who go to jails and prisons are supposed to undergo a medical examination and continue or start receiving any medication or treatment appropriate to the treatment of their condition.
However, according to the guidelines of the penitentiary institutions, an inmate must be examined and his medical history must be taken within 14 days of his admission.
"And of course, a person with type 1 diabetes will be dead" without insulin for two weeks, says Dr. Daniel Lorber, chair of the national advocacy committee of the American Diabetes Association.
Willie Whaley was admitted to the Georgia State Prison Medical Center in December 2017, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported.
Willie Green III (left) needed insulin since the age of 20, but he died of an ACD in a hospital less than two weeks after his reservation at the prison. Fulton County in 2017. After violating his probation, Paul Mullinax (right) lost his life complications related to diabetes
He had nausea and vomiting – the early signs of a diabetes-related disease called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).
The first two days of his medical stay, Willie, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in his childhood, was given insulin.
But then, Willie started talking nonsense. The suspect drug from the correctional facility staff tested it.
When screening results are positive for methamphetamines, medical staff stopped giving insulin to Willie.
It is not known what Willie could have taken with other antidiabetic drugs, but it is known that one of the most common prescriptions, metformin, sometimes appears as a false positive during drug screening.
Three days after arriving at the medical center, Willie was dead.
According to AJJ, he has never been given insulin and has never seen a doctor.
At the age of 41, Douglas Brown (left) died in 2013 from an ACD after only 11 days spent at Georgia's Fulton County Jail. Taff at Hays State Prison finally realized that Esteban Mosqueda-Romero (right), aged 63, was sick and had taken him to the hospital. hospital, but it was too late for him to recover from DKA
An autopsy, however, revealed his medical history of diabetes and revealed that Willie's blood sugar level was five times higher than it should have been for a 31-year-old child.
Rebecca Hill, Willie's mother, plans to take legal action against the institution for the death of her son.
A typical person with type 1 diabetes needs at least two insulin shots to keep his blood sugar stable. Some need four a day.
Without insulin, the body can not process glucose properly to energize cells, so sugars stay in the blood.
In desperation, the body begins to eat fat stores that produce acidic compounds called ketones in the blood. These can accumulate and become toxic, resulting in diabetic coma or even death, as was the case for these inmates.
The symptoms of ketoacidosis appear quickly, in less than 24 hours.
But the reaction of medical staff in correctional facilities is often anything but fast.
Wickie Bryant had a mental illness and often refused her diabetes medications. But the Atlanta City detention center was not monitoring her closely, according to a report. She had died of DKA for hours when her body was discovered
By the time Wickie Bryant, 55, was found at the Atlanta City Detention Center in 2015, her body was in rigor mortis, indicating that she had probably been dead for at least three years. hours, despite the protocol of the establishment providing for verifications at the time, to the report of the investigator.
She had a history of type 1 diabetes, mental illness and a tendency to refuse to take her medication. But that was all the more reason why she should have been closely watched by the penitentiary – not to be left dead for hours.
Barnes Nowlin Jr missed an audience date for a traffic case in 2008 and lost his life.
The 39-year-old diabetic truck driver was taking three different pills to manage his condition and his wife drove them all to Whitfield County Jail after his arrest, reported AJC.
But it seems that his medications were not always administered and that after three days in prison, Barnes vomited and was too weak to stay upright.
A nurse would have been asked to monitor him several times, but she would have "ignored" these requests, according to AJJ.
Barnes Nowlin was ignored by a prison nurse for hours before the death of her 39-year-old son in 2008, despite multiple requests for verification of the low vomiting prisoner.
Barnes' death was called a homicide by a coroner investigator, but no criminal prosecution was instituted and the civil case that his wife had brought against the prison was finally dismissed.
Nine other people at least, including Douglas Brown (41), David Fletcher (33), Esteban Mosqueda-Romero (63), Lindsey Ruffin (58) and Paul Mullinax (55). died the same terrible deaths in the prisons and prisons of Georgia.
The phenomenon is however not limited to the southern state.
Strangely similar cases have been reported in Tennessee, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Illinois and Arkansas.
Dr. Lorber has been working on some of these cases, including a "skipped to death" woman, he said, although he can not reveal the details of his identity or place of residence without him. consent of the family.
Lindsey Ruffin Jr (left) died at the age of 55 after suffering for at least a week when the DKA seized her body. David Fletcher Jr (right) was jailed in 2012. He quickly started acting erratically and was found dead of DKA, covered with his own vomit in less than a week.
David Fletcher Jr missed child support and was jailed in 2012. He quickly began acting improperly and was found dead of DKA, covered in his own vomit in less than a week. He was imprisoned for 17 days for violating his parole or something of a fairly honest minor, he says.
& # 39; After about three days [during which] they somehow ignored her, the doctor came to see her when she was lying on the floor, soaked in her urine and looked through the door of her cell, one meter away.
This is the extent of the medical care that the woman has received.
Last year, the ADA decided to file a class action against one of the largest US prison management companies, CoreCivic, alleging About sixty prisoners with insulin-treated diabetes in his Tennessee facility were "cruel and unusual punishment." & # 39;
These 60 people are among some 206,770 incarcerated people whose diabetes requires constant blood sugar control, frequent insulin injections and oral medications.
And an unknown number of people have already died behind bars of miserable and preventable deaths, simply because they have not been cured and their symptoms have been ignored.
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