The national Department of Health has revealed that government mortuaries across the country are saddled with more than 3,400 unclaimed bodies of people who passed away and their families have not showed up to claim their loved ones remains.
To open some space for more bodies streaming every day from deaths which are mainly unnatural, particularly murder scenes and accidents, the department is burdened with the sad reality of having to store the bodies underground, through what is called the pauper burial.
When a body of a deceased person is not collected for period of 30 days, and public calls have been reasonably made for relatives to come and identify and collect the body, the government facilities or municipalities are empowered to give the unclaimed bodies the pauper burials.
National spokesperson for the department, Foster Mohale told IOL that government has been amplifying calls for community members to actively search for their missing relatives, including extending that search to government mortuaries across the country.
National spokesperson of the national Department of Health, Foster Mohale. File Picture
The Department of Health would like to urge families with missing relatives suspected to be dead to look for them at Forensic Pathology Service facilities otherwise known as government mortuaries to check if they are not part of thousands of unclaimed bodies, said Mohale.
There are 3,465 unclaimed bodies at the government mortuaries across the country. We encourage families to visit mortuaries to check if their missing loved ones are not part of these unclaimed bodies, so they find closure and afford them a proper burial.
Mohale said to claim bodies of the deceased, family members need to bring along copies of their identity documents as well as a copy of the deceased persons documents.
According to the law, bodies which remain unidentified and unclaimed for a period of 30 days, should be given a pauper burial. However, the government will document and archive all the details of such bodies, including a photograph, fingerprints and blood or tissue sample in case the family members come forward later, he said.
KwaZulu-Natal leads the way with 1,336 unclaimed bodies; followed by Gauteng with 770. File Picture
Statistics from the Department of Health, seen by IOL, revealed that KwaZulu-Natal leads the way with 1,336 unclaimed bodies; followed by Gauteng with 770; while Western Cape and Eastern Cape each have 302 bodies; while Limpopo has 283 unclaimed bodies; North West has 266; Mpumalanga stuck with 82 bodies; Free State has 73; and Northern Cape is looking after 51 unclaimed bodies.
Clarifying the predicament, Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo said there is a direct link between the massive murder rate in South Africa and the bodies piling up at government facilities. He said KwaZulu-Natal, with the prevalence of murder cases in the province, understandably leads the pack in the number of unclaimed bodies.
Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo. File Picture
All these cases are as a result of unnatural deaths. When someone has been picked up stabbed, killed, or shot they come to the governments Department of Health mortuaries. They are brought in by the police or anybody. It becomes an inquest (case) for the police, Dhlomo told broadcaster eNCA in an interview.
What we then do as a department, we conduct a post-mortem and have the body ready for burial when certain things have been taken and all that, and (the case) is ready to go into court and say what was the cause of death. Now, somebody has to come and be from the Dhlomo family or Molefe family to claim that body and take it for burial.
By law, we are supposed to keep that body for up to 30 days and then we must work with the police to say nobody has come, can we then do an underground storage, meaning a paupers burial. When you store the bodies underground, someone can come up to say that person who was burnt in that house was my uncle, here are the IDs (identity documents) and then we do DNA tests, he said.
The RK Khan Hospital in Chatsworth, Durban. File Picture: Doctor Ngcobo
In the event where unclaimed bodies have to be stored underground, Dhlomo said the Department of Health depends on municipalities across the country making land available for the burials.
Dhlomo said municipalities have also not been providing the land to bury the unclaimed bodies.
The deputy minister said some of the bodies have been in mortuaries from as far as 2018. The deputy minister said the difficult option of cremating the bodies could also be explored.
For close to six years there is a body kept in a tray in a government mortuary, nobody is coming in to collect it. We need to be advised - what more do we do? Municipalities are not making land available for underground storage; can we begin to have disc
