LOS ANGELES, May 1, 2013 – As many as 3,000 prison inmates in central California deemed to be at risk from a potentially lethal lung disease may need to be moved to other regions under an order from a court-appointed federal overseer.

The directive, issued on Monday, marks the latest effort to stem cases of valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, at two prisons where the disease was found to have contributed to the deaths of nearly three dozen inmates from 2006 to 2011.

But it could complicate court-ordered efforts to reduce overcrowding across California’s prison system, the nation’s largest.

The pneumonia-like illness, contracted by inhaling fungal spores that grow in the dry soils of the American Southwest, is not contagious. But the spores become airborne when soil is disturbed by wind, construction, farming and other activities.

Problems with the disease at two prisons in San Joaquin Valley, the state’s agricultural heartland, were documented on Wednesday in court papers filed by J. Clark Kelso, appointed as a federal receiver for medical issues at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Previous attempts to reduce both the number of infections and the severity of cases were ineffective, Kelso’s spokeswoman, Joyce Hayhoe, told Reuters.

After a report last year found that problems continued at Pleasant Valley State Prison and Avenal State Prison, Kelso asked correctional officials to stop transferring some inmates there who were considered to be at high risk, Hayhoe said.

Among those deemed to be at higher risk of contracting or dying from the disease were African-Americans, inmates of Filipino heritage, those with compromised immune systems and those who older than 55.

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