Mozambique: Morgues without sanitary conditions increase risk of Covid-19 spread – NGO

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Mozambique: Morgues without sanitary conditions increase risk of Covid-19 spread – NGO

4:45 CAT | 02 Feb 2021

Photo courtesy: CIP

The Public Integrity Centre (CIP), a Mozambican non-governmental organisation (NGO), on Monday classified some morgues in Maputo as places of increased risk for the spread of Covid-19 due to the lack of sanitary conditions to deal with bodies of people suffering from the disease. [Read the u CIP report, in Portuguese, HERE]

In a report entitled “Morgues represent a risk of infection by the new coronavirus,” the CIP said that the disinfection machine of the central morgue of Maputo, which receives bodies transferred from Maputo hospital, the country’s largest, is broken and employees work with the same protective equipment, including masks and gloves, for a week.

On the other hand, many corpses are not claimed by relatives, others spend up to ten days in the morgue and there are not enough cold rooms.

After 15 days, the management of the morgue buries in mass graves in the cemeteries of Lhanguene and Michafutene, the report said. In the morgue of Mavalane hospital, one of the largest suburbs of Maputo, the bodies are left outdoors from 3.30 p.m. (the closing time of most public services in Mozambique), due to a lack of personnel, the study said.

The mortuary technician handles the bodies that enter and at the same time attends the public in the mortuary office, where he maintains contact with the families of the victims.

The morgue at Matola hospital, in Maputo province, also has no conservation conditions and is overcrowded.

“The CIP research team also found that in some cold storage drawers with the capacity to preserve one to two bodies there are more than four,” the document said, mixing bodies of women, children and adults.

For the CIP, the situation in the morgues analysed is one of non-compliance with the directives issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the treatment of the bodies of victims of Covid-19, namely, specific training of human resources, provision of personal protective equipment and intensification of cleaning and ventilation.

In this regard, the CIP advocates compliance with those rules, provision of sufficient personal protective equipment, construction of morgues for the bodies of Covid-19 victims, increase and training of personnel and improvement of sanitary conditions.

Source: Lusa