An Israeli rights group said Monday that more than a quarter of all Palestinian prisoners currently held by Israel had contracted scabies since an outbreak was identified in May, and accused the prison authority of improper care and prevention.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said that more than 2,800 prisoners had caught the rash-like infection, with more than 1,700 still actively infected. The outbreak was seen in five different detention facilities, the group said. It was citing figures it said came from the Israel Prison Service.
The group said it filed a legal petition calling on the prison service “to eradicate the scabies epidemic,” accusing the authorities of failing “to implement widely recognized medical interventions necessary to contain the outbreak.”
It said that it halted the legal proceedings after it received a commitment from the prison service to address the outbreak. The prison service said the court had cancelled the petition because the prisons had shown they were dealing with the outbreak in a “systematic and thorough” way.
Nadav Davidovich, an Israeli public health expert who wrote a medical analysis for the group’s court proceedings, said the outbreak was a result of overcrowding in prisons and apparent neglect from prison authorities. He said such outbreaks could be prevented if prisoners were held “in more reasonable conditions.” If the first infections were treated as needed, such an outbreak could have been avoided, he said.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel also said that the Israel Prison Service had cited scabies as a reason for postponing lawyers' visits and court appearances for prisoners. It said those steps “violate prisoners’ rights and serve as punitive measures rather than public health responses.”
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prisons, has boasted about hardening conditions to the bare minimum required by law.
