situations, in return for provisions, they would complete personal chores of inmates who have adequate supply. Inmates are also not provided with cleaning agents by the prison due to the lack of a budgetary allocation, which contributes to unsanitary condition of the sanitation facilities. 5. Access to Medical Treatment Despite the international requirement for prisoners’ access to medical treatment to be the same as the standard of healthcare available for persons outside the prison, and national legal framework which requires that prisoners’ access to medical attention is efficiently facilitated, the Commission found that prisoners’ access to healthcare fell far below the requisite threshold. Prison healthcare is integrated within the national health care system whereby medical officers are recruited by the Ministry of Health, which is also responsible for procuring the supply of drugs and medical equipment. Nurses and dispensers for prison hospitals are recruited by the Department of Prisoners, which also manages the prison hospitals. The overlap between the duties and responsibilities of both the Ministry of Health and the Department of Prisons and the lack of coordination between the two are key reasons for the inefficient administration of, and unsatisfactory quality of healthcare provided to prisoners. There is a severe shortage of medical infrastructure and supply of specialized medicine inside prison hospitals, thereby limiting the options for treatment available inside the prisons and requiring prisoners to be transferred to the general hospital for diagnosis and treatment. Prison hospitals are also short-staffed and there is a deficit of female nurses in the prison healthcare system. Doctors would be available to see patients in the prison hospital at certain times of the day, and would remain on call but not onsite at night time. As a result, the provision of medical treatment at night time was virtually non-existent and inmates reported they have to suffer symptoms throughout the night until the next day when they are taken to visit the doctor. It has also been alleged that delayed medical treatment at night time has caused multiple prisoners to succumb to their illnesses. There is a gross shortage of transportation facilities and officers for the timely transfer of inmates to national hospitals for medical treatment regarding which the Commission received a large number of complaints, in every prison, from prisoners whose medical appointments and operations had been delayed for months, if not years. Superintendents attributed such delays to the lack of vehicles as well as the lack of staff required to escort prisoners to external hospitals. Escorts to the hospitals have to be carried out alongside performing court duty and other transfers. This is especially cumbersome since more officers and even policemen or the Special Task Force are required to transfer condemned or special1 prisoners to the general hospital. Medical transfers are hence not always prioritized by the Superintendent and the medical officers’ referral is often overridden in favour of logistical efficiency rather than symptom severity. 1 High risk prisoners or prisoners requiring higher security viii