Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla says there are over 2000unclaimed bodies in government mortuaries countrywide. KZN has the highest numbers of unclaimed bodies with 1 336 bodies lying in state mortuaries.
Minister of Health and Safety Dr Joe Phaahla said at a parliamentary meeting this week that KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) has the highest number of unclaimed bodies in its mortuaries.
Dr Phaahla revealed that there are more than 2 000 unclaimed bodies in government mortuaries in the country, with more than 1 300 of theme in KZN mortuaries alone.
The minister was responding to a parliamentary question from the Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament Madeleine Hicklin.
“KZN had 1 336 unclaimed bodies, followed by Limpopo with 283, and North West with 266. Mpumalanga and Free State each had a total of 82 unclaimed bodies, while Northern Cape had 51 bodies,” said Mr Phaahla.
“There were no figures for the Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces. The policy of unclaimed bodies was that they had to be moved to a freezer within seven days of admission and if the body remains unidentified for 30 days, the municipal council under whose jurisdiction the designated facility is, must ensure that a pauper burial for the body is undertaken. A picture, fingerprints and blood tissue samples of the body had to be taken and archived.”
Speaking on SAFM’s podcast called First Take SA, Chief Director of Hospital Services at the Department of Health, Dr Relebohile Ncha, said the main reason for the piling up of unclaimed bodies in mortuaries was that families were not coming to claim the bodies of their loved ones.
“Some of these families don’t know that their loved ones have died. Therefore, they don’t have an idea to come and check for them,” Dr Ncha said.
“The department is experiencing a major problem with identifying the bodies that do not have any form of identification. The duration in which unclaimed bodies in government mortuaries are stored varies from seven days to a year. Identifying the body takes longer due to the absence of any form of identification. We have to involve the SAPS, they assist with fingerprints so that the process of trying to identify them before we can take them as pauper burial. It takes a longer time to process all information.”
She added that while the process breaches the government policies of not keeping bodies for more than 30 days, they make every effort with the assistance of other avenues, to help them in the identification process.
“Ideally, we don’t want to bury anybody as a pauper, so we try by all means to check all the other avenues that are available to us, to try and identify the bodies,” said Dr Ncha.
“Unfortunately the majority of unidentified bodies will ultimately be buried in paupers’ graves.”