Officials of the Yaounde Central Hospital Mortuary have published a list of some 53 corpses currently unclaimed at the hospital mortuary since 10 months ago.
The General Manager of the Hospital, Professor Pierre Joseph Fouda, said the mortuary that has only 75 spaces, is already overcrowded with abandoned corpses. Some of the corpses have been in the mortuary for about 10 months with no one coming to claim them.
A good number of the dead bodies had no name tag. Most of the corpses were transferred from the hospital where the patients died.
According to the General Manager of the hospital, Professor Pierre Joseph Fouda, the situation renders work difficult in terms of space to keep other corpses. The mortuary is running out of space and keeping a corpse is expensive; It cost ten thousand a day (10000) CFA FRANCS a day. Therefore, this have been causing loss to the hospital for 10 months now.
He added that, the abandoned corpse comes as a result of family conflict and lack of financial means.
These corpses are of two types. They consist of corpses that are identified and abandon by family while others are corpses that have been brought in by the fire brigade or the police force.
An abandoned corpse according to the law is one that has spent over 60 days in the mortuary. The General Manager of the Yaounde Central Hospital has called on family members to pick up their corpse from the mortuary. The corpse if not picked up, will be handed over to the Yaounde Urban Council for burial.
