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Bodies piling up at GPHC morgue

Aug 24, 2015 News

An alarming number of unclaimed bodies is piling up at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) morgue as a result of relatives failing to retrieve the remains or opting to do so at a later date.
The situation is causing headaches for the GPHC administration and officials there are appealing to relatives of deceased persons to come forward and claim their bodies.
Most of the bodies at the mortuary are those of persons who were patients of the GPHC and who were abandoned by relatives before they died.
According to officials, when these patients die, their remains are stored in the mortuary and efforts are made to contact their relatives.
However in most cases these efforts are futile as many relatives avoid the burden of funeral expenses.
While there is currently a high number of terminally ill patients at the hospital, who eventually pass away, the situation is not one that developed overnight.
“People are always claiming that they are coming for it (dead bodies) and the hospital cannot bury the body if they (say) they are coming for it,” asserted an official from the GPHC.
“It is a very sad situation and when an abandoned patient dies, we are forced to bury them after a period of waiting for relatives to claim the bodies. There is also a cost attached to the exercise of burying also,” continued the hospital official.
In addition, the official went on to disclose that for 2015, the GPHC has already done 17 burials of unclaimed bodies. It is unclear if most of the abandoned bodies are adults or babies.
According to a source, in many instances, mothers who give birth to babies who subsequently die, usually walk away and leave them for the hospital to dispose of, adding to the burden.
The GPHC official stated that it is a stress on the mortuary and hospital, since they have to store the bodies for several weeks, and if there isn’t enough space, then the bodies would have to be stored at a private mortuary for a fee.
Another GPHC official explained that the family members don’t normally come back to claim the body, but they would come back for the valuables that the patient left.

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