Good food guide for prisoners

Inmates across the state will be put on a high-protein diet if they develop swine flu symptoms

Good food guide for prisoners

Inmates across the state will be put on a high-protein diet if they develop swine flu symptoms

Swine flu has now put prison officials on guard. At a state level meeting of senior prison officials on keeping H1N1 virus at bay it was decided that prisoners with symptoms of the disease would be put on a high-protein diet.

This means those prisoners and undertrials with running nose, cold, cough, sore throat will be segregated from other inmates and be given two boiled eggs and 400 ml of milk for breakfast in addition to the usual meal, said a senior prison official who attended the meeting. Ailing inmates are usually given 200 ml of milk.

The official clarified that other inmates will continue to get their regular meals.

The state has 38 District Class 1 jails and nine central jails (see box) manned by around 2,000 prison guards and officials.

Inspector General (Prison) Udhav Kamble said, "All prison officials have been directed to take necessary precautions and follow the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) as given in the jail manual."

The senior prison official added, "As per the directives, compulsory screening of all the new undertrials, including foreigners who are taken out of prison for court hearings will be compulsorily conducted hereafter at the main entrance of the prison by the prison doctors."u00a0

Rajendra Dhamne, Superintendent at Arthur Road Jail, which shelters over 2,200 undertrials said, "I have already directed the jail doctors to examine undertrials with any symptoms of influenza seriously. At present we don't have a single suspicious case."
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Kamble added that critical patients, if any, would be shifted to government-run hospitals.

Meanwhile, State Health Minister Rajendra Shingne told MiD DAY that he would instruct his office to issue directives to doctors attending prisoners in state jails to take all precautionary measures to prevent any outbreak of the virus inside the jail.

The Regular Diet

Breakfast: Upma, poha or banana and a cup of tea Lunch and Dinner: Dal, sabzi, 2 chapatis and a bowl of rice

Undertrials, Inmates in State Prisons

The two District Class 1 Prisons in Mumbai (all approximate figures)

Byculla jail: 600 undertrials

Adharwadi Jail, Kalyan: 1,500 undertrials

9 Central Jails in the State

Arthur Road: 2,200 undertrials (only male)

Thane: 2,600 undertrials (only male)

Taloja: 800 undertrials (only male)

Nashik: 2,500 prisoners (2,000 convicts and 500 undertrials)

Amravati: 2,000 prisoners (1,500 convicts and 500 under trials)

Nagpur: 3,000 prisoners (2,500 convicts and 500 undertrials)

Aurangabad: 1,000 prisoners (800 convicts and 200 undertrials)

Kolhapur: 1,500 prisoners (1,300 convicts and 200 undertrials)

Yerwada: 4,000 (convicts)

*Unless otherwise specified, all jails have both male and female inmates