A quarter of Palestinian prisoners in Israel infected with scabies in recent months

Ramon and Nafha prisons in 2019

Hagar Shezaf reports in Haaretz on 25 November 2024:

In response to a petition filed by human rights organizations, the Prison Service has admitted that about a quarter of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been infected with scabies in recent months. The petition, which will be heard by the High Court on Monday, states that the Prison Service has not taken the required actions to prevent the disease from spreading.

The prison scabies outbreak comes amid complaints by prisoners of inadequate medical care and extraordinary overcrowding in prisons because of the war. Israeli prisons currently hold about 23,000 prisoners, 60 percent more than authorized standard (14,500). About 10,000 prisoners are Palestinians classified as security prisoners.

The petitioners claim that meetings of scabies-infected prisoners with their lawyers have been cancelled and court hearings have been postponed, even though there is no medical justification for these measures, and that they are an infringement of prisoners’ rights.

The petitioners – Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel – filed with the court the minutes of scores of military court hearings that were cancelled because the Prison Service said that the detainees were sick and had to be quarantined, even though a medical opinion attached to the petition states that quarantine is not an accepted treatment for scabies.

The Prison Service argued in response that there was no policy preventing prisoners from meeting their lawyers or an order to postpone court hearings because of the scabies outbreak. But the Prison Service admitted that, on some days, meetings with lawyers were postponed at the Nafha and Ramon prisons and that some court hearings were postponed.

The Prison Service said that the its commissioner appointed a special team dedicated to the matter a few days ago.  A Prison Service source said that, until recently, the procedure for treating the scabies outbreak was specific to each prison and that the special team’s objective was to integrate treatment at all Prison Service facilities and to track the data.

In response to the petition, the Prison Service said that there were currently 1,704 active cases of scabies at the prisons. The main outbreak foci were at Megiddo Prison, Ketziot Prison and the prison compound housing the Nafha and Ramon prisons.  The number of scabies patients at the Nafha and Ramon prisons is declining, after the Prison Service says it drew up and implemented medical guidelines for dealing with the disease following a severe outbreak in September, when the prisons had four times more patients than now.

The Prison Service says that the main reason for the outbreak was the large number of new prisoners from Gaza and the West Bank who were infected with the disease before their arrival at the prisons and were admitted before the symptoms were visible.

The Prison Service also cited the steps taken to treat the outbreak, including a decision to procure medications and launder clothing at high temperature. However, belying the claim, in early November, the Physicians for Human Rights–Israel stated that prisoners had reported that the wing had no washing machines, that insufficient clothes and cleaning supplies were distributed and that many prisoners had no access to a dermatologist. The Prison Service noted that the prisons required infrastructural preparations in order to implement the measures.

Morshad, a released prisoner from Al-Ram near Jerusalem, told Haaretz that he caught scabies when in administrative detention at the Ramon Prison. He said that he was infected in May. “There was scabies there, which had spread phenomenally. We tried to ask for separation of the sick patients from the healthy ones, but that wasn’t done until July,” he said. He said that his six-man cell held ten prisoners, some of whom slept on the floor.

“When we requested treatment, we were told that we were terrorists and should die. At first, they only gave us aspirin,” he said, and after several weeks, they were given a scabies treatment ointment. He added that a dermatologist only came to see the patients in September, four months after he caught scabies, and that, until then, the patients were treated by medics. He said that the doctor promised to ensure that they would receive medication for the disease, but it only arrived after his release 20 days later.

Morshad said that, following his release, he went for treatment at a Palestinian hospital where he was hospitalized for two days, followed by treatment at home. He also said that during his stay at Ketziot Prison, before his transfer to Ramon Prison, he met prisoners with scabies. He added that the conditions there were particularly bad, and that, early in the war, the prisoners did not shower for a month.

The Prison Service has not responded to this article.

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