The salty-coppery taste of blood stopped Sgt. Mark Flynn in his tracks. Flynn, who figured the blood might have come from an inmate he had just encountered, immediately abandoned his search of cells in a Jessup prison and hustled to the medical unit.
Correctional officers take no chances with their health. Flynn underwent 12 weeks of medical tests and preventive treatments, but even now, nearly two years later, he worries that he will one day be diagnosed HIV-positive.
"Each time there's contact with bodily fluids in a prison, it's like Russian roulette," Flynn said. "You never know."
It is common knowledge among correctional officers, Flynn said, that the blood-infection rate for prisoners is high. A state health department report released this week provides details.
More than one-third of Maryland's approximately 23,500 prisoners have the hepatitis C virus, the hepatitis B virus, the human immunodefiency virus or syphilis, according to the report, which also says many prisoners have multiple infections.
Nearly 65 percent of HIV-positive inmates also have hepatitis C, and more than half of those with hepatitis B also have hepatitis C, according to the report.
The study used blood samples routinely collected by the Division of Correction to test for syphilis in newly incarcerated inmates.
Conducted by the Maryland AIDS Administration over a two-month period last year, the study came to some "troubling conclusions," said Liza Solomon, the agency's director.
"Some of the findings take your breath away," she said. For example, the study found that more than a quarter of Maryland inmates are infected with hepatitis C, compared with 1 percent to 2 percent of Marylanders as a whole, she said.
`Silent epidemic'
Richard Rosenblatt, assistant secretary for treatment services in the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, called hepatitis C a "silent epidemic" sweeping through prisons across the country.
Maryland prisons do not provide hepatitis C treatment, but Rosenblatt said that will begin "somewhere down the road."
Interferon therapy, the only available treatment for hepatitis C, is costly and has extensive side effects, Rosenblatt said. Prison officials will need to determine which infected prisoners would be eligible for treatment before adding to the $65 million annual prison health care budget, he said.
