A New Wave of Scabies Outbreak Sweeps Prisoner Sections in Occupation Prisons

SadaNews - The Prisoner's Club stated that there is a dangerous and rapid outbreak of scabies (scabiosis) sweeping through the prisoner sections in several central prisons. This is based on dozens of visits conducted to the prisoners during the months of April and May 2026, which revealed shocking levels of humanitarian suffering and intentional health deterioration inside the prisons.

The Prisoner's Club confirmed that the testimonies relayed by lawyers reflect a catastrophic reality that the prisoners live in amid the widespread outbreak of the disease and their deliberate deprivation of treatment and healthcare. Prisons have turned into infected environments where diseases and epidemics are used as a systematic method of torture against the prisoners.

In the overcrowded cells and rooms where no less than eight prisoners are held, at least three prisoners are infected with scabies, amidst the absence of the minimum hygiene and humanitarian care conditions.

It was clarified that the prison management canceled several scheduled legal visits for prisoners during the past period, after informing lawyers that the prisoners slated for visits are infected with scabies, in a dangerous indicator reflecting the scale of the epidemic rampant inside the prisons and attempts to obscure the catastrophic health reality faced by the prisoners.

Moreover, prisons such as "Ofer," "Megiddo," “Anqabut,” and “Janout” have recorded numerous testimonies about the widespread spread of the disease, along with the emergence of serious health symptoms in prisoners at "Megiddo," which included severe abdominal and headache pain, as well as intense body aches, raising serious concerns about the spread of additional diseases and epidemics in light of the complete absence of any real medical follow-up.

It was noted that a large number of infected prisoners had previously contracted the disease and partially recovered, only to be reinfected due to the continued lethal health conditions inside the prisons, while others have suffered from the disease for several months, with some suffering for over five continuous months, without effective treatment or serious medical intervention.

Many prisoners have developed abscesses, skin lesions, and acute infections resulting from the worsening of the disease and the lack of treatment, while prisoners are deprived of sleep due to intense itching and continuous pain. Some have lost the ability to move normally due to the deterioration of their health conditions.

The psychological suffering experienced by the prisoners has reached unprecedented levels, due to the continuous disease and their physical and psychological depletion over long months. Some prisoners now wish for nothing more than to recover from the disease, as daily suffering has crushed them, leaving them unable to think about anything else, including their freedom.

The club confirmed that the Israeli prison administration continues to impose a set of policies and measures that are the main reasons for the continued spread of the disease and its expansion, primarily the deliberate deprivation of personal hygiene tools, severe overcrowding in the rooms, lack of ventilation, and the deprivation of exposure to sunlight, alongside the acute shortage of clothing that forces prisoners to wash their clothes and wear them while wet, in humiliating and inhumane conditions.

The Prisoner’s Club emphasized that what is happening inside the prisons cannot be separated from the ongoing torture and extermination policies against the prisoners, stressing that the prison system uses diseases, epidemics, and medical crimes as slow-killing tools against detainees, as part of a systematic policy aimed at physically and psychologically destroying them.

The club explained that these policies have resulted, since the beginning of the extermination war, in the martyrdom of 89 prisoners and detainees inside Israeli prisons, only those whose identities have been announced. Diseases, including scabies, have been one of the prominent factors contributing to the martyrdom of some prisoners, amidst continued policies of treatment deprivation and medical crimes.

The club renewed its demand for the World Health Organization and all international human rights and humanitarian organizations to take urgent and immediate action to stop the systematic medical crimes against prisoners, pressure the occupation authorities to end the policies that have turned prisons into hotbeds of epidemics, torture, and slow death, and work to provide urgent treatment and healthcare for the prisoners, hold the occupiers accountable for the ongoing crimes they commit against them, and end the ongoing state of failure and complicity.