Before COVID-19, Philippine jails already a death trap

every month for the past six months but only one death in April has been attributed to COVID-19. the death toll in February, March, and April was still within the range of monthly deaths in the last quarter of 2019 to early 2020. The pandemic has ravaged the country since March, with local transmission of the coronavirus taking place as early as February.

Prisoners in extremely congested jail facilities live in deplorable conditions, lacking proper health care, hygiene, and nutrition. Human rights advocates have called for the early release of elderly and sickly detainees. They have also pushed for making available information on death and infection rates.

A prison insider said bodies were piling up in NBP’s old isolation ward called Dorm 1D. In late April, at least “20 bodies emitting foul odor” were stacked there. On May 1, the insider added, three men died after the NBP hospital ran out of oxygen. Guidelines issued by the Health department stated that deaths with unknown causes shall be treated as COVID cases and the corpse cremated within 12 hours.

The national penitentiary was already in the spotlight last year because of the alarming number of deaths there.Humanitarian groups have long blamed overpopulation, poor hygiene, lack of proper food, and limited access to health care for the lamentable condition. The calls to depopulate jails have only grown louder with the coronavirus now part of the equation.

Death and infection rates in detention facilities have always been difficult to obtain. Like Narag, Human Rights Watch has called forsince the coronavirus hit the facility last March., which supervises city jails, also claims that BJMP’s death statistics is still “acceptable.”

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