In early March, the Massachusetts Department of Correction reached a settlement with prisoners’ rights groups over its medical treatment of prison inmates infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). The settlement requires testing every prisoner for HCV and treating all who have the disease. While the Federal Bureau of Prisons recommended opt-out hepatitis C testing for all inmates during the prevention baseline visit, few state prison systems have implemented universal testing. The Massachusetts settlement may speed action in other states. The National Lawyers Guild and Prisoners’ Legal Services filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boston in 2015 on behalf of Massachusetts prisoners who had hepatitis C claiming that the state had reduced the number of patients treated for hepatitis C and delayed evaluating prisoners in order to avoid being responsible for the new, costly treatments. While the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild says this is believed to be the first settlement of its kind, there are increasingly calls for universal HCV screening of prisoners. Inmates in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Minnesota and Tennessee have filed similar lawsuits, according to the Wall St. Journal reports. Public health experts are also calling for increased testing and treatment of […]