A lawsuit was filed Monday against three doctors and 11 nurses who work at a prison in Kansas as well as the company contracted to provide medical services for inmates throughout the state’s prison system after medical staff ignored an inmate who told them, “it feels like something is eating my brain.”
Even after Marques Davis, 27, became so confused he drank his own urine, employees for Corizon Correctional Healthcare neglected his cries for help at Hutchinson Correctional Facility in Kansas.
Corizon Correctional Healthcare, has been sued 660 times over a 5-year period, according to the ACLU.
The lawsuit, filed by Kansas City attorney Leland Dempsy on behalf of Davis’ family, alleges he was denied “meaningful medical treatment” for eight months after he began complaining of symptoms.
According to the lawsuit, a CT scan taken after Davis suffered a heart attack in April revealed “dramatic swelling of the brain sufficient to force the upper part of the brain down into the lower brain.”
After his heart attack, Davis was finally hospitalized.
But he died the next day.
Attorneys representing Shermaine Walker, Davis’s mother, say Davis’s condition was “readily diagnosable” and treatable.
But Walker says all they would do is take blood, give her son Ibuprofen then send him back.
“I was calling the jail every day,” she said, according to the New York Daily News.
“He’s telling me, they haven’t done anything. They would give him ibuprofen and send him back.”
Walker said when Davis made complaints to medical staff about something being wrong with his head, he was ignored.
“He says, ‘mom, whatever is going on with me, it’s messing with my mind.’ He would tell me this on a daily basis,” she said.
Marques Davis’ pleas for medical help at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility went ignored by Corizon Correctional Healthcare staff, even after a brain fungus began eating his brain, causing him to be so confused he drank he own urine.
Corizon issued a statement after the lawsuit was filed over Davis’s death saying “we expect any legal proceedings to reveal Mr. Davis’s care was appropriate.”
According to the lawsuit, Corizon Correctional Healthcare, which makes $1.6 billion a year off sick prisoners, has a long history of being motivated by its bottom line, and putting profit over the health of its patients.
“As long as Corizon is motivated by its bottom line, there will always be a perverse incentive not to provide treatment,” the ACLU said in a written statement.
After complaining of symptoms for eight months, Davis eventually lost his appetite and began sweating uncontrollably.
But even that went ignored by medial staff at Corizon.
Davis was serving a 53-year prison sentence for aggravated robbery and attempted murder, but his mother said he maintained a positive outlook.
“Every day above ground is a good day, he would tell me,” Walker said.
Davis’s death, after being taken off of life support following his heart attack, was determined to be caused by advanced granulomatous meningoencephalitis–a form of meningitis caused by the Candidda Albicans fungus.
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