“Mystery Illness”, cripples half of the 5000 Prisoner Population here in Bangkwang

 

 

Living in such appallingly overcrowded conditions as we do in Bangkwang it was always clearly only a matter of time before we would see a serious outbreak of sickness or disease amongst the 5000 prisoner population. Our fears took on reality when in the first week of September over half of that population were struck down in a matter of days with a chronic round of sickness. A bad situation made worse by the prisons pathetically inadequate medical facilities and staff whom were almost brought to their knees by this crisis

 

The sickness, with similar symptoms to Dysentery and believed to have originated from the filthy untreated river water we are forced to use here, claimed its first victims at around lunchtime on September the 4th. People began to complain about feeling sick and as the afternoon wore on a large queue developed at the yard toilets as people were struck down with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea over and over again.

 

 I myself was one of the first of those unlucky enough to succumb to the sudden illness. Having felt fine up until lunchtime, I was within an hour or so reduced to a quivering mess with high temperature and fever, squatting over the hole with my bowel going into spasm’s. I soon became aware that I was not the only victim and later when I sprinted over to the open sewer that runs round the compound in order to vomit I noticed that at least 3 or 4 other prisoners had beat me to it and were already busy spewing the remains of their lunch into the same filthy mess.

 

By 3:30pm and “Lockdown” it was all I could do to drag myself into the block and up the stone stairway to our cell, seeming to have ejected my energy reserve along with all the other solids and liquids out of my backside. All I wanted to do was lay on the cell floor and sleep but was kept awake for the entire 17 hour “Lockdown” by an agonizing night of cramps, squatting over the toilet, even though by this time I must have been completely ‘empty’. The fear of shitting myself whilst asleep was enough to keep my eyes open and my concentration focused. It was fortunate that I was the only one in our cell to have gone down with this sickness as two or more men fighting over the same hole would certainly have meant a very messy and unpleasant night for at least one of them!

 

I’ve never been so glad to be unlocked and let out of the cell as I was that morning and after cleaning myself up and a change of clothes I reported sick and requested a visit to the prison hospital. By the time we were called to gather at the building gate over 40 prisoners had also reported sick having spent the night in agony on the toilet just as I had.

 

What a sorry bunch of sick buggers we must have looked as we shuffled and dragged our heavy feet in an untidy rabble on the 500yard walk through the prison to the ancient hospital building, one or two stragglers being chastised en route by an officer for stopping to vomit down a storm drain at the side of the track.

 

As can only be expected by the sorry outfit that calls itself the Bangkwang Medical Department, the hospital had not been forewarned or briefed of the situation and on our arrival there it was explained that there wasn’t actually any doctors on duty and that we would have to wait until someone showed up, though nobody could say for sure when exactly that would be.

 

We laid around, curling up on the waiting area benches, 40 or more of us in various stages of the sickness and some frequently darting off to the hole in the ground toilet in the hospital yard. As an hour passed, and then another, our numbers were swelled by groups of sick prisoners arriving from other buildings and soon there must have been 80 or more of us but still no doctor in sight. One of the nurses eventually drummed up the initiative to start giving each of us a brief examination taking written notes but this was soon abandoned in favor of issuing every sick prisoner with two sachets of Electrolyte and eight Paracetamol tablets each and sending us back to our buildings. The doctor had not showed and without his consent the hospital was unable to prescribe us any stronger medicines, so that was the extent of our treatment that day. Over the next few days hundreds more prisoners went down with this crippling sickness and by Friday of that week over half of this building population of 860 men had succumbed. I had decided that another trip to the hospital was a waste of time and instead tried to manage my own sickness using medicines that I had acquired and kept safely for just such an event. Meanwhile reports from prisoners returning from a morning trip to the hospital told of an overwhelmed medical staff, a rammed ward of sick interns, a tight almost miserly control over issue of medicines and a complete lack of a professional diagnosis as to the cause of the outbreak.

 

Announcements were made telling us that all drinking water should be boiled and no food should be prepared using untreated water. But we have always imposed these rules on ourselves as a matter of course and self preservation anyway and the announcement did little or nothing to help those already suffering the illness.

A building allocating its sick prisoners more than one day a week to attend the hospital is unprecedented but all that week and more surprisingly over the weekend the hospital was attended by the sick from any building. The hospital was already creaking under the weight of its responsibilities and were not encouraged by the news that some of its staff had started deliberately shying off work and staying at home for fear of going down with what still remained an essentially ‘Mystery’ illness themselves. It doesn’t add up to good news when you know that the individuals whose job it is to care for the sick are too scared to come to work.

 

By Sunday, although the medical department had not yet identified the exact illness they were dealing with, they did initiate a program of injecting new patients with a broad Anti-biotic but by this time the sickness had started to slow down in its onslaught anyway, seeming to have ran its natural course and the number of new patients dwindled as the days passed.

 

Although many prisoners, in fact the frightening proportion of almost half of Bangkwang’s population spent several days suffering this chronic bout of sickness, all have thankfully recovered and there has been no lasting after – effects. However, it did demonstrate to us what we have assumed all along; that a bout of sickness or epidemic of disease such as this, when it came, would be uncontrollable and would tear through the prison population like wildfire as a direct result of the chronic overcrowding and appalling filth here. The medical dept. was grossly unprepared, understaffed and completely overwhelmed this time round and god forbid when next time comes, as it is sure to do, they will not have done a thing to improve their inadequate preparation or response. Next time more serious illness could very easily result in deaths, a lot of them, but by then it will be too late. I hope I’m not around when it happens.