While HR may be the breeding ground of monsters according to The Office’s Michael Scott, our prisons and jails may be the breeding ground of something worse–the H1N1 flu.
A friend of mine who is a health care provider sent an alarming but thoughtful Facebook message to several of us comparing the spread of the killer flu in 1918 through U.S. Army troops jammed aboard transport ships to France and our nation’s and state’s currently overfull prisons and jails.
I’m not exactly sure what the policy is here in South Dakota, but in a recent visit to the state pen in Sioux Falls, I talked to some guards about the flu. They said the flu was rampant. I then asked if they were inoculated. They said they could get the flu vaccine but it was up to them.
Prisons and jails are not as isolated as you might think. I visit one or the other several times a month to see clients. Pastors visits inmates. Family members visit inmates. Service providers from the outside come and go. Jails and prisons have large staffs who then go home and to church, school, and out to eat. Plus there are the assembled inmates sitting around inside most of the day in close contact with each other.
I don’t mean to be an alarmist. But I think we should know from our governmental leaders what exactly is being done to protect prison and jail staff, prisoners, and the rest of us from the possible H1N1 breeding ground.
