Among the 48 unidentified corpses to be buried by the 37 Military Hospital are 16 casualties of the June 3 fire and flood disaster.
The 37 Military Hospital has issued out a 21-day ultimatum starting from January 23, 2017, for families of 48 deceased persons who have since been left unclaimed at the hospital’s morgue. The hospital warn that at the end of the deadline, all the unclaimed bodies will be given a mass burial.
This notice was given in a statement issued by the authorities of the 37 Military Hospital. The decision is aimed at decongesting the hospital’s morgue which is currently at its maximum capacity.
“The continued storage of these bodies is causing severe congestion and affecting the efficiency of the mortuary,” part of the statement reads.
Families who may have lost their loved ones without recovering the corpses are therefore being called upon to come and see if they are at the hospital.
According to the hospital authority, among the 48 unidentified corpses about to be buried are 16 casualties of the June 3 fire and flood disaster. The gory incident claimed over 150 lives in Accra back in 2015. Read about the June 3 disaster here.
Below is the list of the unclaimed and unidentified corpses.
The issue of unclaimed dead bodies is not a new one to hospitals. On some occasions, the bodies are identified but left unclaimed while on some others, they are totally unknown. Such cases usually arise from accidents whereby the victims were injured beyond recognition, when someone dies in a strange land where he or she has no relatives, after a mass disaster that claimed entire families and relatives such as an earthquake. On rare occasions, criminals may succeed in dumping their victims at a hospital without leaving any traces of identification.
Whichever way, every state usually make varying constitutional provisions for hospitals on how to dispose unidentified and unclaimed corpses over time. The step about to be taken by the 37 Military hospital is just one of them.
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