Corrections_Today_Fall_2025_Vol.87_No.3

COMMITTEES

Prison medicine in Gaza, Mozambique with Health through Walls International Committee By Justin Sterett, MD W e must have been an odd sight in our matching purple shirts, walking

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” — Nelson Mandela

from the hotel in Xai-Xai, Mozam bique, down the road to the prison. Collectively, we represented a global assortment of characters, passionate about improving healthcare and dis ease screening in some of the most struggling prisons on the planet. Health through Walls, the NGO responsible for this adventure, has been fighting to improve conditions for inmates for nearly 25 years, with missions spanning from Haiti to Southern Africa. They have a proven track record in this kind of work. The group had been coming to Mozambique for several years, but this was their first time in the rural Gaza Province visiting the over crowded prison in Xai-Xai — and my first mission with them. There was at least one other physician and a nurse practitioner who were well experienced with the operation and how things normally run. Our team was otherwise a diverse assortment, including an epidemiologist, leaders in the public health carceral space and several technologists looking to improve the digital healthcare infrastructure in the Mozambican prison system.

Adobe Stock/ creedline

The prison itself, with its colo nial castle like architecture, looked like it could have been a facade for a Medieval Times. This was the main men’s prison, originally built to hold 50 inmates, and now housing over 425. Separating it from the smaller, less crowded women’s pris on was a small dirt yard, and this is where we set up shop. Health through Walls is fluent in how this type of operation functions and flows, so stations and tents were erected quickly.

Inmates would flow through stations starting with a registration desk, moving to vital signs, and then to lab draws where a rapid HIV test was performed. They were then screened with a digital X-ray set up next to a tree, connected to AI enabled software designed to detect radiographic signs of tuberculosis. After that, they were examined using an AI-enabled stethoscope in development to help detect patho logic lung sounds indicative of TB infection.

Corrections Today | Fall 2025

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