Even the dead deserve some dignity

Jan 23, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Guyana will continue to be viewed as a backwater nation. The country is spending millions to redesign hospitals and health institutions to protect them from natural disasters, while at the same time corpses are being allowed to rot at a public hospital mortuary because the freezing system malfunctioned.
Yesterday’s Kaieteur News carried a very disturbing report that several bodies, including an infant’s corpse, were found in a decomposing state at the New Amsterdam Hospital Mortuary after the facility’s freezer went down. Efforts by the newspaper to obtain a comment from the hospital and health officials were unsuccessful.
One man was reported to have alleged that the body of his relative was handed over to him in a decomposed state. He is said to be extremely upset. He is a poor man.
Such a situation ought not to have developed. Surely if the freezing system went down, contingency plans should have been immediately put in place.
Years ago when persons died in the countryside, many families would hire ice boxes in which they placed their dead. The corpses would be preserved within these boxes using ice. These boxes are still available and could have easily been rented from the funeral parlours.
In any event, the hospital authorities could have arranged for the bodies to be stored at private funeral parlours until such time as the mortuary’s freezing system became functional again. That this did not happen demands an explanation as to whether there were any protocols governing a breakdown of the freezing system at the mortuary, and if so, whether these were complied with.
If on the other hand there were no such protocols, it must be asked why there were none and why, in any event, there was no intervention to avoid the decomposing bodies. If the authorities knew about the breakdown of the mortuary’s freezing system, then it can be considered callous on their part that contingency plans were not activated immediately. If on the other hand, they did not know, the question is why and what measures were there in place to monitor what was taking place.
An independent investigation should immediately be launched into this matter. It would be highly insensitive and disrespectful for the health authorities – both the regional health authorities and the Ministry of Public Health – not to undertake an investigation into these allegations which are now in the public domain.
Governments have always been wary about public calls for investigations, because they imagine such calls as part of a conspiracy to embarrass them or their supporters in public office. But there is a greater public good to be served by such investigations.
Such investigations help quell speculation. They provide answers as to what went wrong. This helps to bring closure to the case, which in this instance will be for the grieving families. It is very hurtful for those poor families whose loved ones lay dead in that mortuary, to have additional burdens added to their grief-stricken state.
It is not fair to them, especially since the option could have been offered for them to have the bodies stored in private funeral parlours without in any way compromising the intended post mortem examinations. It is not unusual for bodies to be shuttled from funeral parlours to mortuaries for the purpose of autopsies.
An investigation must not be viewed as threatening to supporters of the government who may find themselves in the firing line. It is important for improving the functioning of systems and to avoid a repeat of any such future occurrence that an investigation be launched.
This investigation should be seen as providing the causes of what happened, what went wrong and what can be done to prevent a recurrence.
It is not these objectives which government fear. What is feared is who should be held responsible for what went wrong. It is fear of this implication which has seen attempts at covering up incidents or launching doctored investigations.
For the sake of the dignity of the dead, let us hope this does not happen in relation to the allegations of decomposed bodies at a public hospital mortuary in Berbice. The tragedy of Guyana is that when it comes to the poor, justice is always slow.
You can bet your last dollar that if it were rich families whose deceased were the victims of a malfunctioning freezing system at that mortuary, there would have been public outrage over the incident. But poor people have to bear their humiliations and hope that public pressure leads to justice.

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