
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994                   TAG: 9406260086
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: POWHATAN                                LENGTH: Short

ILLNESS AT PRISON INVESTIGATED

Eleven more inmates were taken to a hospital Friday night as prison and health officials investigated an illness that swept through a building at Powhatan Correctional Center.

The admissions bring to 23 the number of inmates taken to the hospital, said Lee Higginbotham, a patient superintendent at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. A dozen inmates were hospitalized earlier last week.

All 23 inmates are in stable condition, Higginbotham said.

Dr. Martin Cader, director of the Division of Communicable Diseases Control at the state Health Department, said that doctors believe at least one of the inmates has histoplasmosis, a fungal infection.

Several other inmates and three guards also became ill this week with symptoms that included headaches, fever, coughing, shortness of breath and diarrhea.

Dr. Sara Monroe, an infectious diseases specialist at MCV, said the hospitalized inmates were being treated with antibiotics.

She said the illnesses probably stemmed from the spray-cleaning of a screen that was covered with mouse droppings, human excrement and food. She said she was told that "the guys throw stuff out of the cell through the screen at the guards," and the screen had not been cleaned in years. - Associated Press

by CNB