ANGELA QUINTAL, Cape Town | Tuesday
CAPE Town’s overcrowded Pollsmoor Prison was a potential public health hazard for the Western Cape, the doctor in charge of medical care for prisoners told MPs on Wednesday.
Dr Stephen Craven — an independent contractor who has been in charge of Pollsmoor’s health facility for 13 years — was briefing the National Assembly’s correctional services committee.
He has also advocated a smoking ban in all prisons, in line with South Africa’s anti-tobacco legislation.
Craven painted a bleak picture of Pollsmoor’s health environment, saying toilets did not flush, while broken windows and tiles were a haven for germs.
”What scares me, (is) not only the dysentery, but meningococcal meningitis. We had a scare earlier. Fortunately the inmate did not have meningococcal meningitis, but it will come sooner or later. It thrives in conditions of overcrowding.”
Moreover, the personal cleanliness of inmates was not enforced, Craven said.
”They become filthy. They are not required to wash or cut their hair. We have endless problems with parasites. Fleas, lice, scabies …”
Craven said the greatest cause of ill health among prisoners was tobacco and urged prison authorities to implement a no-smoking policy in line with South Africa’s tobacco legislation.
Prisons were government buildings and workplaces in terms of the legislation.
Craven said Pollsmoor should follow the US state of Georgia’s example where all state prisons were no-smoking institution.
”If the prisoners want to smoke, they go outside to smoke and only at certain specified times.
”If they can enforce no smoking in Georgia, I would imagine they can enforce no smoking here. The law requires it.”
Craven also complained that most of the prisoners in Pollsmoor ”sat on their backsides all day doing nothing” and should be required to work according to their physical and mental capacity.
This could improve their health and well-being.
”This would keep them occupied. All to many of them sit all day doing nothing, smoking dagga and causing trouble. They should be out there, working.”
On the overcrowding, Craven said there were a lot of prisoners who should not be in Pollsmoor.
”You close your work houses, you fill your prisons. If you close your mental institutions, you fill your prisons. I know I’m getting controversial here, but if you demolish your gallows, you fill your prisons as well.”
Pollsmoor needed fewer prisoners, or more well-trained, motivated and appropriately paid nurses and orderlies.
In the long term, the a decision on who should be providing medical care to the prisoners had to be taken.
There were options, all of which had disadvantages. One could privatise medical care or transfer all medical services in prisons to the provinces.
A third possibility was to transfer inmates’ medical school, or to a partnership between the medical schools and the province.
Craven said that for the past two-and-a-half years he had recorded daily problems where his instructions were not carried out.
”I keep daily record of all these failures. I don’t go looking for trouble … I just make a note of everything that comes to my attention, because I have got the evidence to support these allegations.”
Craven’s grim address prompted Johann Durand (NNP) to ask whether Pollsmoor, if not attended to, could constitute a health problem for the people of the Western Cape.
Craven replied: ”The answer to your question is yes. The public health problems of the dysentery that I mention, the fleas, the lice the scabies, the tuberculosis …sooner or later they will find their way back to the wide world outside.
”You cannot look at health inside prisons, without looking at health outside. The two go together.”
Craven said he was not aware of whether the Correctional Services Minister Ben Skosana was aware of the problem or whether the head of Pollsmoor Prison had received his reports.
”This is the tragedy. In the old days I would go and chat with the governor, have a cup of tea and solve it.
”With present management I don’t have this occasion. It is a different management style.” – Sapa