By Victoria Law, The Nation

Attempts to improve care for a wide range of chronic conditions have stalled, leaving incarcerated people to suffer.

“Medical is a joke,” said Davide Coggins, currently imprisoned at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York’s Washington County. “Unless you have diabetic issues or something simply attended to, you will suffer and decay before you get some type of treatment, if any.”

The 42-year-old has Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, blood clots, colon cancer, and, if left untreated, fatal complications. Three intestinal resections have left Coggins without parts of his colon. He attributes the severity of the ailment to prison conditions. “I’ve had issues in and out of prison,” he told The Nation and New York Focus. “But the vast majority of my complications came while incarcerated.”

Coggins has little control over the food he can access. “I have found, after dealing with this for over 20 years, that the best (and cheapest) way to deal with my condition is to eat five or six times a day and keep things flowing through my digestive tract,” he said. “Things like rice, hot dogs, bread, fish, etc., cause me little to no issues. The right diet could solve nearly all my issues and cost the prison system virtually nothing.”

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