Vacaville Prisoners With AIDS Lack Care, Protesters Say
About 75 people participated in an AIDS protest Saturday outside the California Department of Corrections prison hospital.
The protesters chanted, marched and held a “die-in” at the main gate to protest the department’s policy toward inmates with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus.
“Prisoners die, they do nothing,” members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power chanted while Vacaville police and corrections officers watched.
The protest came a day after the department announced the appointment of an AIDS ombudsman and a medical director for a new hospital wing to treat prisoners with AIDS.
Last month, a group of Vacaville inmates held a three-week hunger strike to protest the deaths of four prisoners with AIDS.
Also last month, the Assembly Public Safety Committee reported that some inmates with AIDS died prematurely because of poor care at the medical prison.
The Vacaville prison complex houses about 7,000 inmates, including 2,800 in the medical unit.
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