A support group for families and friends of political prisoners has renewed its call to protect the health and welfare of persons deprived of liberty (PDL), as the Philippines starts its vaccination drive against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
In a letter sent to Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III on Tuesday, March 2, Kapatid spokesperson Fides Lim said all PDLs “should not be denied of their right to get a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine as they are clearly not spared from the dangers posed by the contagious and deadly disease.”
“Subhuman conditions make prison facilities a reservoir of infectious disease. Ignoring them in the national efforts to contain COVID-19 will result in failure since prisons and the communities surrounding them are linked,” Lim said.
Kapatid has asked the Health department to “ensure the rights to life and health of prisoners, including all political prisoners,” saying that all PDLs should be included in the government’s mass vaccination program against COVID-19.
“Please do not fail them this time like how they were failed when our petition seeking the release of medically vulnerable prisoners—the very old, the very sick and pregnant women—took five months with the Supreme Court only to be remanded to the lower courts for even slower action,” Lim said.
The group questioned why there is “no official pronouncements that consider PDLs as part of the most at-risk populations who need to get the vaccine first.”
“With an unenviable record of having the highest jail congestion rate in the world, Philippine prisons are a death trap,” Lim said.
“Even before COVID-19, prison agencies report that one PDL dies every day or 5,200 a year at the New Bilibid Prison while 300 to 800 PDLs die every year in Bureau of Jail Management and Penology facilities,” she added.