David Proulx was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2003, but he suspects he contracted the virus decades earlier. He injected drugs in the 1970s and picked up several tattoos when he was first incarcerated in the early 1980s. Over the years, the infection wreaked havoc on his liver. Within a year of diagnosis, he received antiviral drugs to treat the disease, but the medicine failed to eliminate the virus. Proulx had run out of options. In 2011, however, the US Food and Drug Administration approved two new medications to treat hepatitis C. Clinical trials indicated that these drugs could help individuals like Proulx who had previously failed other therapies. But Proulx can't access them. He's incarcerated at the Massachusetts Treatment Center within the correctional complex in Bridgewater, and the state has not yet begun administering the new medications to inmates, according to Joel Thompson, a lawyer and prisoner advocate based in Boston.
The hepatitis C virus is the leading cause of liver cancer and the most common chronic blood-borne infection in the US, affecting approximately 3.2 million people. Among prisoners, the infection is rampant. Between 12% and 31% of the roughly 1.6 million people living in state or federal prisons in the US are infected with the virus, as a result of exposures such as injection drug use and unsafe tattooing.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution