The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) in the Ramon and Nafha prisons told lawyers that scheduled visits were cancelled for quarantine reasons due to the spread of scabies among the prisoners on a large scale, the Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said, Al Jazeera reports.

The two organisations explained that scabies had spread widely among the detainees in several prisons, specifically in Naqab, Megiddo, Nafha and Rimon, due to harsh measures imposed by the IPS on the prisoners after October 7.

The organisations added that according to testimonies from detainees inside the prisons, conveyed to their lawyers, the IPS had turned scabies into a tool of “torture and abuse” by deliberately committing medical crimes against them, depriving them of treatment, and not taking any of the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

IPS measures imposed on prisoners, including the lack of necessary quantities of shower materials, a lack of ventilation and the isolation of prisoners in cells that lack sunlight, have contributed significantly to the spread of diseases, the organisations said.