The Federal Medical Centre
FMC has issued a 21-day notice informing the public of its decision and asking
owners of the unclaimed bodies to identify theirs and have them evacuated.
The authorities of the
Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, have revealed their plan to
conduct mass burial for unclaimed corpses in their morgue.
The management said many of
the corpses had been abandoned for over 10 years, though the total number of
corpses were being verified and separated by the pathologists in the Federal
Government’s health facility.
The Chief Medical Director,
FMC, Yenagoa, Dr. Dennis Allagoa, explained that the move, among other things,
was to create space in the mortuary as fresh corpses were being brought in on a
daily basis.
He also mentioned pollution
of the environment as one of the reasons for the management’s decision.
Allagoa said, “We issued a
21-day public notice because we noticed that corpses have littered the entire
mortuary and there is no space to take in new corpses.
“As the decay goes on in
the mortuary, the corpses have become a threat to human life because chemical
and biochemical effects are ongoing.
“So, we want to clean up
the area so that people can enjoy the benefit of a good site and space to bring
in their corpses.”
He noted that most of the
unclaimed corpses were deposited by security personnel while others were found
on the road and the rivers and brought to the mortuary.
Thee CMD added, “A lot of
them are corpses that were deposited by the security operatives. Most of them
are just bones, legs and they are not actually full body parts.
“They brought in people
that died on the road and from the river. People that died due to issues of
militancy, they brought them in their mass and they kept them at the morgue.”
Allagoa, however, stated
that the mass burial would follow due process and that it would be transparent.
He added that relevant stakeholders
such as the police, officials of the Ministry of the environment, the Judiciary
and the media had been placed on the alert for the mass burial.
Punch
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