A Hawai'i medical team plans to fly to Kentucky next week to investigate the death of an inmate who died after falling ill at a private prison in the eastern part of the state.

Hawai'i, which suffers from prison overcrowding, houses more than 2,000 inmates on the Mainland, including 119 women at the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky.

The prison, run by Corrections Corp. of America, also houses 399 Kentucky inmates.

Sarah Ah Mau, 43, was taken to the Appalachian Regional Healthcare Hospital at McDowell on Dec. 30 and transferred that night to the ARH Medical Center in Hazard, where she died the next morning, authorities said.

A spokesman for the Hawai'i Department of Public Safety, Michael Gaede, said an autopsy found she died of natural causes. Dr. Tracey Corey, a state medical examiner, said in an interview that her death had no public health implications for other inmates.

The Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA said that a review of Ah Mau's medical records found that her care was "appropriate and provided promptly, in a quality manner."

Gaede said medical records show Ah Mau complained twice between Thanksgiving and Christmas of stomach pain and was treated with castor oil for constipation.

He said Hawai'i's investigators would be coming to Kentucky on Jan. 23.

Ah Mau was sentenced in 1993 to life in prison for second-degree murder in the 1989 beating death of her 19-month-old son.