THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, September 16, 1995           TAG: 9509160002
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A12  EDITION: FINAL  
TYPE: Editorial
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   65 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: ***************************************************************** CLARIFICATION The quotes from state officials contained in Saturday's editorial ``Explain prison deaths'' were from a Richmond Times-Dispatch report on the demise of several inmates receiving dialysis at Greensville Correctional Center. Attribution of the quotes was inadvertently omitted. Correction published , Wednesday, September 20, 1995, p.A10< ***************************************************************** 10 ON DIALYSIS REPORTEDLY DIED AT GREENSVILLE EXPLAIN PRISON DEATHS

Virginia's Department of Corrections has been inexcusably vague in responding to inmates' claims that 10 fellow prisoners on dialysis at Greensville Correctional Center have died during the past year.

``All I can really confirm, for sure,'' said spokeswoman Amy Miller, ``is that number is not exactly right. It's too high. It's just a lot of trouble to pull together information we don't have according to the way that you're asking for it. . . . How many of these patients (who died) happened to be dialysis patients?''

A lot of trouble? What an appalling thing to say! Failure to have specific life-and-death data readily available increases suspicion that something is amiss and adds to the grief of the families of the dead men.

The number of deaths, some experts have cautioned, is not necessarily an indication of problems in treatment. Jean Machenberg, executive vice president of the National Kidney Foundation of Virginia, said that of all the dialysis patients in the state penal system, ``the really critically ill ones are automatically sorted out and sent (to Greensville) . . . for the patients' own good.''

Greensville has the prison system's only accredited hospital. It is run by a private firm, ARA Health Systems Inc. of St. Louis.

But an alarm raised by David Frank Jones needs to be addressed. Jones, 42, was a dialysis patient who, according to his family, died March 30 at Greensville. He wrote in February that in his five months there ``seven people have died. Five or six of them were on dialysis. . . . Something is wrong here and needs to be corrected.''

Inmate advocate Jean Auldridge of Virginia Citizens United for the Reform of Errants said she personally brought Jones' pleas to Corrections' central office. ``We know his pleas were in vain,'' she said. ``The loss of David Jones is everyone's loss. (He) is a classic case . . . of a man who suffered from an illness that was satisfactorily treated until he became a state responsibility.''

This raises questions about ARA Health Systems' performance as well as the oversight of the corrections system itself. These questions are all the more troubling following, as they do, other serious prison-system problems uncovered on the Allen administration's watch.

The state medical examiner's office, which is investigating the allegations, owes inmates, their families and Virginians generally a prompt and complete accounting. by CNB