Cape Town - A huge increase in gunshot victims has been singled out as the main reason for the pile-up of corpses at the city’s state mortuaries. Worse still, mortuaries have run out of shelf space and corpses are being stored in mobile fridges.
MEC for Health Nomafrench Mbombo says a 40% rise in gun-related cases dealt with at state mortuaries has contributed to the backlog of an already strained system earning the department particular ire from Muslims.
This past week the Muslim community had expressed concern over the long waiting period in receiving the bodies of family members.
The backlog at Salt River mortuary stands at almost 90 bodies while the Tygerberg facility also faces similar problems owing to the higher number of bodies coming in daily.
Salt River’s facility manager, Wayne Mitten, said fridges at the centre were full and mobile fridges were on stand-by at Tygerberg in the event that they no longer had shelf space.
“Those trucks can take 23 racks each and currently the air-conditioning has been turned on and the temperatures are being monitored so that when we can’t take anymore bodies we will call them in, which will probably happen [this] morning,” he said.
Mbombo said July, August, and September saw bodies coming in from gun related murder increase from 306 in 2016 to 479 this year.
“In the last three months we have had quite a high number of cases of unnatural deaths, in the same period compared to last year we saw an over 40% increase of unnatural deaths,” he said.
“The alarming [figures] are mostly related to gunshots. Generally someone presenting with a gunshot, even at the emergency care centre, it takes longer to stabilise that person. The same applies when that person dies, an autopsy needs to be done."
“Previously we had a policy where with the Muslim community we were able to do it immediately but now if we have five or six bodies come in in a day, it’s a strain."
“[On Friday] we had about 81 bodies of which we had committed to release five that belong to the Muslim community by Monday but then we received an additional six from the Muslim community and this is a weekend so we are unable to commit to releasing them the next morning, taking into consideration that there has been a long queue.
“We have had communication with the MJC and our HOD will be meeting with them on Monday to engage with them on this issue.”
The Muslim Judicial Council has welcomed the measures put in by the department and called for calm in the community.
Head of Health Dr Beth Engelbrecht said they were in the process of putting in measures to alleviate the problem.
She said on average one pathologist conducts 350 autopsies per year but the number has now jumped to 850 cases.
“Forensic pathologist services is for unnatural deaths, this service is not rendered in the private sector so we can’t draw on any specialist in the private sector because they are not there, so our ability to respond so rapidly to this massive growth in three months time, we can’t deal with it.
“We have given approval for additional forensic pathology officers, they have appointed a medical officer and approval for registers, who are specialists in training, so at least at the end of the five-year period we will have qualified specialists.”