HYDERABAD, April 7: A skin disease has reportedly spread among woman prisoners and their children at the Hyderabad special women’s prison and the jail administration is taking measures to contain the disease. This was stated at a programme organized by the Women’s Rights Association to mark the International Health Day here on Thursday. Association president Rafia Bangash spoke of health issues of women and observed that people generally had no access to better health facilities. “The condition of jailed women is more serious because they do not have enough access to treatment”, she said.

She called for provision of medicines and an ambulance for the women’s prison. “Arrangements for regular checkups of woman prisoners should be made on weekly or monthly basis”, she further said. She also urged women to take care of their health and their children.

Hyderabad Central Prison superintendent Muzaffar Alam Siddiqui gave an assurance that an ambulance would soon be provided to the women’s prison. He said a campaign was being launched to check cases of the skin disease, scabies.

He maintained that clean environment was more important than provision of doctors and medicines because people would not be needing medicines if they had environment free of pollution and germs. He asked the prisoners to keep their beddings under sunlight daily for some time to kill germs.

About the AIDS control programme, he said conditions of women were better than men.

Dr Saeeda, Dr Kausar Zamani of Daraul Aman and Dr Irfana said mothers must give due to attention to their children and they should take preventive measures in their routine life to avoid communicable diseases.

Women prisoners, Shazia and Chinyere Joy Emeka, a Nigerian, said the skin disease was spreading among women due to shortage of space. They urged the government to ensure proper treatment of woman prisoners.