LOLA - Hepatitis C Prison Project

The Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) epidemic has exploded in American prisons.

Although several correction departments around the states have made some strides towards the HCV epidemic behind the prison walls, they are still slow in treating HCV positive inmates/patients, mainly because treatment costs are so high. These costs can appear overwhelming to departments wary of spending their annual health care budget on a single condition. The cost of medication for just one inmate/patient for a single year ranges from an estimated low of $12,000 to $15,000 in New York. However, not every HCV positive person is a candidate for drug therapy. Costs become more reasonable when we recognize that few inmates would actually benefit from medication, so treatment costs may not be as expensive as it first appears. Just as important as medications is information, education and psychological support mechanism.

The harsh reality is that the issue of treatment costs still remains the dominant factor and has yet to be addressed aggressively. Keeping in mind, that in the not so distant future the very inmates that have gone untreated throughout the years may soon be among the ones facing Chronic HCV, end stage liver disease and/or in need of a liver transplant. Yet, all of this can be avoided since today there is treatment available that can potentially eradicate or control this virus. The government needs to stop the spread of HCV epidemic on its tracks and take actions now on how best lifesaving information and cost-effective treatment can be made available to not only the prison population but within our own communities at large.

In 1999 LOLA created the Volunteer LOLA Hepatitis C Prison Project taking one important step forward towards HCV education within the NYS prisons. This resulted in the Department of Corrections (DOCS) in New York State (Deputy Commissioner Lester Wright) approving LOLA HCV bilingual materials for inmate education in all 70 NYS prisons. Since then LOLA has made numerous amounts of HCV educational presentations to hundreds of inmates throughout the NY state. LOLA has also assisted many of the Spanish speaking prisoners in understanding HCV, treatment and options in the language they can understand. Throughout the years we have also corresponded with thousands more prisoners from around the United States on their request for more information. While LOLA correspondence services remain available our HCV presentations are limited. As a non funded program its efforts relies heavily on volunteer support and resources.