Eugene woman's efforts give afflicted hope.

Byline: TIM CHRISTIE The Register-Guard

SALEM - Phyllis Beck doesn't have to be here, not on a sunny Saturday afternoon, an hour from home, walking into a grim world of iron bars and razor wire.

But she's here at the state's maximum security prison, waiting to talk with a group of inmates about a disease that afflicts about one in three prisoners in Oregon, hepatitis C.

Beck is founder of the Hepatitis C Awareness Project and the National Hepatitis C Prison Coalition, organizations she runs on a shoestring from the Bethel-area home she shares with her mother.

She writes a prison newsletter, operates an e-mail network and has won a grant to build a Web site. Every other month, she enters the Oregon State Penitentiary to talk with inmates about the disease.

On a recent Saturday, Beck entered the prison with other volunteers from the coalition to run a support group for prisoners. She was joined by coalition volunteers Brian Bowes, John Bergland and Marti Wilson. All are infected with hepatitis C; Bowes is co-infected with HIV.

After walking through a hyper-sensitive metal detector, the volunteers are led through the first in a series of gates, where a prison officer reads a warning: The Department of Corrections cannot guarantee the safety of visitors; visitors could be taken hostage; and Corrections Department policy does not recognize hostages.

The guard tells the visitors to stay together as they stop at another gate, then walk across a wide corridor next to inmates passing by. They're led through another gate and up a flight of stairs to an activity room.

Beck is greeted by two inmates, Gil Brown and Larry Vaughan, who coordinate the HIV-AIDS Awareness Program, which tries to provide useful health information to inmates. They produce a newsletter, Awareness News, which is circulated to other prisons and to people on the outside, run peer education programs and help prisoners navigate the Byzantine health bureaucracy within the prison.

Because the disease is spread through blood-to-blood contact, prisoners can become infected with hepatitis C through IV drug use, tattooing and fighting, all of which are illegal in prison and all of which take place, Vaughan said.

Inmates straggle into the fluorescent-lit meeting room and sit in rows of folding chairs. The faded light blue paint is peeling and water-stained. On the back wall is a mural depicting a peaceful scene of geese flying over a marsh under blue skies and puffy white clouds.

As the meeting starts, about 30 prisoners listen as Beck makes a few opening comments and then takes questions. The prisoners ask about hepatitis C and complain of the difficulty they have in getting treatment.

"It has nothing to do with ignorance; it has to do with economics," one prisoner says. "Inmates are the absolute bottom of the food chain."

Beck and Bergland answer questions and offer advice. Wilson tells how her disease went into remission after she took a six-month course of interferon and ribavirin, the recommended treatment for hepatitis C. Bowes talks about the difficulty in being co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C.

Bergland tells the prisoners to try herbal treatments and urges them to exercise, meditate, eat right and not be resentful.

"Everything you put into your mind and your body and your soul affects your health," he said.

Beck's work with prisoners grew out of the Hepatitis C Awareness Project, a support group she started in 1998 in Eugene after she was diagnosed with hepatitis C.

Beck, 52, said she may have gotten infected when she worked as a certified nursing assistant. But she suspects that she was exposed to the virus when she injected drugs as a young woman.

Three people attended the group's first meeting at Trinity Methodist Church. Soon, 30 to 40 people were showing up, and the meetings moved to Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Before long, Beck started getting letters from prisoners concerned about their medical care.

"You could tell these prisoners were really wanting information," she said. "They were concerned about transmitting the disease.

"They need to be cared for. You can't just let them die."

Beck recently won a $35,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help pay for a newsletter and the Web site.

Risk factors associated with the disease multiply in the confined setting of a prison, she said, adding that eventually, most inmates will return to Oregon communities.

"I think it benefits the prisoners and it benefits the community" if inmates can gain a better understanding of their disease, she said.

In return for her support, prisoners have sent Beck hundreds of letters and cards and keepsakes, which she keeps in a plastic box. She picks up a copy of Hepatitis magazine and reads aloud a letter from one inmate who wrote that Beck helped him get treatment for the disease.

"I owe my life to his lady that I've never met, other than through correspondence, and I don't quite understand her motivation," the prisoner wrote. "She has almost single-handedly taken on a caseload of all prisoners with HCV ... making sure we are being treated fairly and humanely, as human beings."

Beck cries as she reads the letter, and answers a question asked earlier.

"So that's why I do it," she said.