Swiss Prison Doctors

Needle and Syringe Exchange Programmes (NSP) prevent infectious diseases in community and prisons. Less than 1% of prisons worldwide have NSP. One barrier is organizational concern for needle stick injuries from used syringes. Given these concerns, retractable syringes were intoduced into the prison of Champ-Dollon, Geneva, Switzerland and the results are contained in the brief.

Opioid substitution treatment (OST) is not uniformly provided in all prisons as recommended by international guidelines. The Swiss prison of Champ-Dollon in Geneva is an exception, where OST has been available for the last 20 years. The aims of this study were to describe the OST programme in this pre-trial prison setting, and the patients involved.

In the past, health management in Geneva's six post‐trial prisons had been variable and inconsistent. In 2008, the unit of penitentiary medicine of the Geneva University Hospital was mandated to re‐organize and provide health care to all six prison facilities. The specific aim of this paper is to outline the example as a practical solution to some of the common challenges in unifying the structure and process of health services across multiple small facilities, while meeting European prison health and local quality standards.

This article highlights the ethical aspects of medical management in custody with special attention to the doctor-patient relationship (one important aspect of provision of health care in prison), which is at the centre of this issue.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of abdominal radiography in the detection of illegal intracorporeal containers, with low-dose CT as the reference standard.

Hunger strike is a regularly reported problem in prison. Although clinical situations are rarely severe, hospitalization is often considered. In consequence, it is not only physicians working in prisons, but also hospital medical teams who face challenges related to hunger strike, involving somatic, psychological, legal and human rights aspects.This article provides guidance for monitoring and management of patients on hunger strike.

This article describes the example of a Swiss canton in which the legal framework enables health care personnel to put into practice health care that is equivalent to the care available to non-imprisoned persons, including harm reduction measures for prisoners. It describes the medical institutions in charge of health care for prisoners and the legal and ethical framework, its repercussions on the clinical and public health context, as well as persisting difficulties.

Despite the dissemination of principles of medical ethics in prisons, formulated and advocated by numerous international organizations, health care professionals in prisons all over the world continue to infringe these principles because of perceived or real dual loyalty to patients and prison authorities.

The frequency and range of health problems encountered in prisons should shape the composition and competence profile of prison health care services. Yet little is known about the primary care needs of detainees in most European countries, and no detailed description is available for Switzerland. The aim of this study was thus to provide a detailed description of the health problems of detainees in Switzerland’s largest remand prison.