A Sick Way To Treat Someone
TB patient tells of sordid conditions, botched translations at Fresno jail

In her 51 years, Hongkham Souvannarath has been through a lot -- war and upheaval in Laos, a Thai refugee camp, resettlement in the United States 13 years ago. But until last year, she had yet to experience the trauma complicated by what her lawyers say were multiple translation blunders: a 10-month imprisonment to treat her tuberculosis.

The Fresno homemaker speaks mostly Laotian and a little English. When cops showed up at her door in July, she said a health worker told her she was going to the hospital, but she ended up at the jail, where family members say a Hmong translator erroneously told police Souvannarath was suicidal. “They put me in a cell that had no light, no water, no heat, no food,” recalled Souvannarath in a June 7 deposition. “I was there for two or three days.”

Eventually, she was taken to the jail infirmary, where a doctor inserted an IV for her tuberculosis drugs and confined her to the ward. “It was very dirty and smelly there,” she recalled. Her arm swelled up, and eventually, she required treatment at a real hospital -- where she says she was kept, literally, in chains.

Souvannarath said things got better only when she was transferred to a normal jail floor, where other inmates helped her get food and assisted her with janitorial work that she said officers told her to do. Only after she managed to get word to her sponsors in Ohio was she released after 10 months -- 10 months with no court hearing, no lawyer, no charges filed against her.

County officials point out that Souvannarath’s tuberculosis likely became resistant, and thus harder to treat and potentially more deadly, because she did not take her medicine as directed. And because the TB bacteria is easily transmitted by coughing, it can quickly spread, especially among large families in close quarters. That’s why state law makes treatment mandatory for active TB cases -- even for those who don’t want it.

Now, if Souvannarath was truculently refusing to take her meds so she could spew active TB germs all over her loved ones, that would be one thing. But according to her deposition, she told authorities within days that she would “do anything if you would let me go home.” Now confined under house arrest, she continues not only to take her medication but to demand written documentation each time a health worker watches her swallow it.

Even the county says it held Souvannarath for too long and that detaining anyone at all is a “last resort.” Getting people to understand their condition is usually a better way to achieve compliance. Indeed, the county dutifully sent out two interpreters to explain things to Souvannarath. Problem is, the first spoke Hmong and the second spoke Thai, but Souvannarath speaks mainly Laotian. All she thought she understood was that the drugs could kill her, thus prompting her to evade authorities in a terror that has not yet ceased.

That’s Souvannarath’s side of it. For now, the county is not commenting about the specifics of the case, as is typical when a lawsuit is pending over what her lawyers say was a violation of every rule in the book. Said attorney Catherine Campbell: “They put her in jail and metaphorically threw away the key.”

We hope that the legal discovery process will bring to light some explanation, not least of which is whether Fresno County understood the simple fact that not everyone who speaks Laotian speaks Hmong or Thai or vice versa, just as not everyone who speaks Mandarin speaks Cantonese or Shanghainese. In any county, not knowing that is shameful ignorance. In the county with the state’s highest Southeast Asian population, it is worse.

Contact the Editor