Mass. AIDS treatment lowers death rate.

The death rate of Massachusetts inmates has dropped by half, with an even more drastic reduction in deaths related to AIDS, specialists said. According to the Associated Press, this largely was due to fewer inmates with AIDS and better treatment for HIV, the specialists said.

The number of overall prison deaths in the state declined from 36 in 1995 to 17 in 2002, and 13 so far this year. Deaths related to AIDS dropped from 14 in 1995 to two in 2000, the last year data were available, according to the Department of Correction and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. "Just like in the community, people are living longer with HIV," Dr. Arthur Brewer, medical director of the University of Massachusetts Correctional Health, told The Boston Globe. His agency provides health care for the state's prisons.

While Brewer said that the availability of powerful AIDS drugs is the largest factor in the death rate drop, recent state aid cuts to AIDS groups could mean that inmates within prison walls get better treatment than low-income people outside. "The medical care that people get in prison at this moment in time in some cases supersedes the level of care they get out of prison," said Dr. Barbara Herbert, who served on a blue ribbon panel in 1992 investigating allegations of inadequate care for inmates with AIDS at Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Framingham.