Overwhelmed by decaying bodies, major mortuary in Sudan shut down by authorities
May 17, 2022 (KHARTOUM) – Sudanese authorities announced on Monday it has shut down the Bashair Hospital mortuary located south of the capital Khartoum after discovering close to a thousand unidentified bodies that have begun to decompose.
Last month, Sudan’s Sovereignty Council established a technical committee to oversee the burial of the unidentified bodies as they overwhelmed morgues and hospitals thus posing environmental and health risks.
Hisham Zain al-Abidin, the Director of the Forensic Medicine Department at the Ministry of Health in the state of Khartoum, told {Sudan Tribune} that it was the ministry which took the closure decision.
He explained that the presence of these bodies lying on the floors of the mortuary and decomposing in light of extreme temperatures and frequent power cuts necessitated making this move.
“This situation led to having rodents that began to devour rotting corpses, which does not adhere to religion or morals and does not represent Sudanese values,” Zain al-Abidin said and noted that these bodies have been in the mortuary since 2019.
There are only three mortuaries in government hospitals in Khartoum and frequent power outages led to the decomposition of a large portion of the bodies which prompted citizens living in nearby areas to protest and press for resolution.
The official revealed that the number of unidentified bodies in the morgues in the state of Khartoum is about 2,300, including 1,000 in the Bashair Hospital, 1,000 in Omdurman Hospital and about 300 bodies in the Academic Hospital.
He underscored the necessity of burying the corpses in the mortuary after closing it in accordance with strict legal procedures that would include taking photos and autopsying them.
Last year some forensic doctors in Sudan claimed that the number of bodies in one of the mortuaries was tampered with were buried without identifying them after which they resigned en masse from the autopsy committees formed by the government’s attorney general.
The families of victims killed in the course of the December 2018 uprising and the June 2019 sit-in insist that these bodies are analyzed to prove the involvement of government troops in killing them.
(ST)