There are currently, due to a number of reasons, 4 045 unclaimed corpses held at state morgues in South Africa, which is in violation of the relevant health regulation and creates a serious health hazard.
The FF Plus gleaned this from the reply to a parliamentary question to the Minister of Health, Joe Phaahla. The number per province is as follows:
โข KwaZulu-Natal : 1 509
โข Gauteng : 1 049
โข Limpopo : 353
โข Western Cape : 350
โข Eastern Cape : 315
โข North West : 251
โข Free State : 108
โข Mpumalanga : 68
โข Northern Cape: 42
The question was posed to the Minister after he had failed to provide a satisfactory answer to a written question on 9 June 2023 as he only made mention of five of the provinces in his reply.
The FF Plus will also investigate the matter to determine whether the numbers are correct.
The FF Plus explained to the Minister that the party had received complaints from the public about corpses being preserved with ice packs because there is not enough space in the state morgues to keep them, and about corpses that have been kept in the morgue for more than two years.
According to recent media reports, the backlog at state morgues is partly due to a shortage of pathologists. In one case, the family had to go and identify a deceased’s already decomposed body.
Measures should urgently be implemented to prevent this problem from escalating any further. Provision must immediately be made to adapt the capacity of morgues to accommodate the numbers to ward off a crisis.
The current situation amounts to a violation of regulation 180, section 10, of the National Health Act, which determines that a person must be buried within 30 days of their death.
In cases where there is no family or where they cannot afford a funeral, government must give the deceased a pauper’s burial.
Information received by the FF Plus indicates that problems with the state making payments to undertakers often result in funerals not taking place, which leads to backlogs.
At the moment it seems that talks between the forensic pathological services, local municipalities and the police have not yet yielded a solution to this problem.
Existing legislation on this will most probably have to be amended and all stakeholders in the industry should be involved in the process.
