Moses Byaruhanga, the police director for health services revealed, yesterday May 22, that 90% of mortuaries in Uganda cannot keep dead bodies for more than 3 days.

Speaking to New Vision, Dr Byaruhanga said that they are struggling with limited space.

“Most mortuaries are manned by few people. The Mulago city mortuary, the facility was built in 1940 when the population of Kampala was 200,000. Currently, the population of Kampala Metropolitan is 5 million and the facility is still the same,” Byaruhanga said.

Byaruhanga also revealed that they have three fridges and each fridge can only store 12 bodies a day yet they receive between 7-12 bodies a day. The situation is worse in mortuaries upcountry because those do not keep records.

“We can only keep a body for 3 days, if not claimed we get our tractors and they take it to Bukasa cemetery so that we create space. We are also few and sometimes we struggle with electricity and water so we cannot keep unclaimed bodies for long because we can get infections like TB, Ebola, Hepatitis, and Covid 19,” Byaruhanga said.

Byaruhanga also revealed that public cemeteries are also poorly managed.

“Each body is supposed to be disposed of in its grave but what is happening, is people are being buried in mass graves. This is happening because people who work in cemeteries have never received any formal training. They do not know that also the dead deserve respect,” Byaruhanga said.

Most of the unclaimed dead bodies are of bodaboda accidents, road accidents, murder, overdrinking, sudden deaths, natural deaths, and mob justice.

Before they bury, they first take pictures and DNA tests. The pathologists tag them together and bury them. That way it becomes easy to look through the records.

According to CHAPTER 281 of the Public Health Act, a local authority is responsible for the removal and burial of bodies of destitute persons and unclaimed bodies.