Pubdate: Mon, 22 Jan 2007
Source: Barrie Examiner (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007, Osprey Media Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2317

TATTOO PLAN SHOULD STICK

Roy Romanow recently spoke to a seminar at the University of Toronto, 
where he reiterated some of the highlights of his acclaimed royal 
commission on the future of health care, including the commission's 
lofty goal of making Canadians "the healthiest people in the world."

The biggest challenge, Romanow said, is changing government attitudes.

"Governments have to view the decisions they make through the prism 
of 'will it invest in the well-being of our society -- in our health 
and overall quality of life -- or will it diminish those things?'"

The federal ministry of public safety's decision to cancel an 
experimental prison tattoo program aimed at reducing the spread of 
AIDS and hepatitis will do nothing to improve the well-being of society.

Although Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day claimed the $960,000 
program wasn't "demonstrably effective," a study by the Correctional 
Service of Canada viewed the program through a different angle of the 
Romanow prism, and found it did.

The Correctional Service's findings should not be underestimated. 
Prison administrators aren't known for their willingness to embrace change.

Yet a draft evaluation by the CSC found the program had 'the 
potential to reduce harm, reduce exposure to health risk, and enhance 
the health and safety of staff members, inmates and the general public.'

None of these findings is new or particularly surprising to Dr. Peter 
Ford, a Kingston doctor who proposed the tattoo program and tested it 
in Joyceville Institution 14 years ago. Ford thinks a lot like Roy 
Romanow -- and, as a former consultant to the Correctional Service, 
has hands-on experience with the prison culture as well.

Ford is also the author of a number of groundbreaking research 
studies that discovered an epidemic of hepatitis C in federal 
penitentiaries in the mid-1990s.

The virus, which inflames the liver and can lead to cancer, spreads 
like wildfire in prisons because inmates use dirty needles to ink 
tattoos and inject illegal drugs. Legalizing the tattoo program was 
intended to reduce hepatitis infections -- and to a lesser degree, 
HIV infections -- by providing prisoners with sterile equipment. By 
all accounts, it appeared to be working.

The guards' union, meantime, is on record as opposing the 
government-funded tattoo program, arguing that it undermines 
workplace safety. Giving inmates clean needles, the guards say, is 
like handing them a lethal weapon. The prevalence of HIV and 
hepatitis, however, suggests prisoners can get their hands on 
potentially harmful weapons whether or not they're supplied by 
Canadian taxpayers.

Ford has been calling for a national debate on the hepatitis epidemic 
for years, warning that the burden on the health-care system will be 
astronomical. Most inmates will eventually leave prison and make a 
new home in a community.

"Hepatitis C involves a long, expensive death with long hospital 
admissions," Ford says. "It really is a horror story."
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MAP posted-by: Elaine