Some 30-plus unclaimed dead babies and four adult corpses have been left to decompose at an improperly functioning mortuary at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex for the last three months, a hospital source has disclosed.Sources said workers had to do their jobs with an unbearable stench and under the threat of health risks while hospital authorities turned a blind eye to the situation. According to the source, it was only last Thursday that the bodies were removed by the Ministry of Health and given “pauper’s burials.” The Guardian was told that the babies were born to mostly young mothers who did not claim them after they died at the hospital.The source said the adults were sent from the Emergency Department and were mostly elderly people who were abandoned by their families. The source explained that while relatives were to blame for unclaimed bodies, the hospital needed to have a policy in place to deal with such a situation. “What we have in the mortuary are chillers, not freezers. We chill a body soft enough for a post mortem,” said the source. “A body is not supposed to be in the mortuary more than seven days. “These bodies have been in the chiller for three to four months.”At the hospital on Monday, the stench of rotting bodies still lingered around the mortuary even though workers said they cleaned it with bleach and disinfectant. To compound the situation, the mortuary’s chillers were not functioning. “The tracks for the trays on one side of the mortuary deteriorated a long time ago,” one worker complained. “We have not been able to put bodies there. The trays on the left are not sufficient for the amount of dead bodies coming in.” Members of the public who went to the mortuary to identify their dead during this time reported seeing dead bodies on the floor. On Monday, the one functioning chiller started to malfunction.As a result, ten dead bodies had to be sent to Armstrong’s Funeral Home at taxpayers’ expense. The source said the hospital had been working on getting the chiller fixed. “This place is supposed be under lockdown,” the source insisted. “Workers all over the hospital are protesting but the three mortuary workers are still doing their jobs under these terrible conditions.” The source explained that those conditions have existed for years with no intervention by government. The source said workers are underpaid and given no doctor’s check up to find out if they contracted any diseases from the mortuary.“Mortuary workers have been suffering for years... They are fed up now,” the source added. President of the Public Services Association Watson Duke said the union had advised workers, under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, to cease working under such conditions. The union had also advised members of the public to pay to keep their dead at private funeral homes. “If you leave it at the mortuary, in a few days you will have a rotting corpse,” Duke said. “The authorities of the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) have abandoned the mortuary and its workers.” Questions on the matter sent to the communications department of the NCRHA remained unanswered up to late yesterday.
three to four months wtf, we becoming one seriously heartless society.
