The management of Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, has revealed plans to conduct mass burial of unclaimed corpses in hospital’s morgue.

To this extent, the FMC has issued a 21-day notice informing the public of its decision and asking owners of the unclaimed bodies to come for identification and evacuation. The management said many of the corpses had been abandoned for over 10 years, though the total number of corpses were being verified and separated by pathologists.

The Chief Medical Director of the medical centre, Dr. Dennis Allagoa, explained that the move, among other things, was to create space in the mortuary as fresh corpses were being brought in on a daily basis. He also mentioned pollution of the environment of the health facility as reason for the management’s decision.

Allagoa said: “We issued a 21-day public notice because we noticed that corpses have littered the entire mortuary and there is no space to take in new corpses. As the decay goes on in the mortuary, the corpses have become a threat to human life because chemical and biochemical effects are ongoing.

“So, we want to clean up the area so that people can enjoy the benefit of a good site and space to bring in corpses of their dead ones.”

Allagoa noted that most of the unclaimed corpses were deposited by security personnel while others were found on the road and the rivers and brought to the mortuary. The CMD added: “A lot of them are corpses that were deposited by security operatives. Most of them are just bones, legs and they are not actually full body parts.

“They brought in people that died on the road and from the river. People that died due to issues of militancy, they brought them in their mass and they kept them at the morgue.”

Allagoa, however, stated that the mass burial would follow due process and that it would be transparent. He added that relevant stakeholders such as the police, officials of the Ministry of the Environment, the Judiciary and the media had been placed on alert for the mass burial.

•Photo shows Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Yenagoa.

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