California needs to “make it easier” for prison guards to transfer away from facilities where there is a danger of valley fever, the correctional officers’ union said in a report by Bakersfield Californian.
Valley fever has killed three employees and sickened 103 others over the last four years, said Jevaughn Baker, spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
A court has ordered the state to move about 2,600 inmates at risk of contracting valley fever out of Avenal and Pleasant Valley prisons, Baker said.
Baker said the union sent a letter to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in July asking that employees at high risk of contracting valley fever to be free to transfer to other facilities.
“We received the letter and are working on a response, which should be ready within 30 days,” CDCR press secretary Jeffery Callison said in February. He added that the department does not quibble with the findings of a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study that concluded prisoners at Avenal and Pleasant Valley state prisons are infected with valley fever at a much higher rate than the general population.
The state had commissioned the study because it was trying to find ways to reduce the rate of infection at the prisons, Callison said. “We’ve already been implementing some of the recommendations and others will be looked at in the future,” he said.
For now, the prison is taking precautionary measures such as improving ventilation, putting in door sweeps to block outside dust and avoiding any unnecessary disturbing of dirt, Callison said.