By Makeida Antonio
The government will be moving ahead to bury five unclaimed bodies that were once stored in a makeshift morgue — a refrigerated shipping container — at the former Holberton Hospital’s compound.
The Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister, Lionel Hurst, confirmed that there was a recent breakdown of the refrigeration unit at the Ministry of Health’s Pathology Unit being housed there.
Hurst said technicians informed the government that the issue had been resolved. However, it was later discovered that the unit “did not get as cold as it should have”. This, he said, prompted the bodies awaiting post-mortems to be moved to a funeral home until burial.
He added that the government will move forward with burying five bodies that have not been claimed by relatives. In the meantime, the remaining bodies will stay at the funeral home pending total restoration of the morgue’s facilities.
“The others are in the funeral home until such time until the refrigeration and air conditioning in the morgue are fixed,” Hurst told yesterday’s post-Cabinet press briefing.
A video circulating on social media last weekend showed flies swarming the refrigeration unit with an apparent foul smell coming from the container. Media reports claim that the unit was disconnected from a power source after the bodies were already removed.
In October 2021, Minister of Health Sir Molwyn Joseph underscored the need for a government-run morgue to reduce the use of privately owned ones during the pandemic and the concern for space at the public cemetery.
There has been no definitive date given as to when a new public cemetery will be operational. Hurst said yesterday that government finances were tight but pledged that a new cemetery would “become a reality” once resources were available.
