The details are redolent of a script from a really terrible B movie. The genre could be horror or crime; it’s hard to decide which fits better. Perhaps it’s both.
This newspaper reported on Sunday that on Friday, September 23, “staff”, who had gone to prepare a body for burial, discovered that the mortuary freezer at Port Kaituma was not working. That body was decomposing, as were two others which had been stored there. The latter two had been taken there by the police. They were awaiting post-mortem examinations (PMEs), possibly to determine whether the deaths were due to foul play. All three were buried the same day; the first by relatives of the dead person, the other two by the regional authorities. No PMEs could be done at that stage and if in either case, a crime had been committed, the perpetrator(s) could relax; the evidence has been buried.
By the time the report was published on Sunday, October 1, the mortuary’s freezer was up and running again, according to Region One Chairman Brentnol Ashley, who also told this newspaper that he had no idea how long it had been out of commission. Apparently no one else did, as if they knew, one would assume that information would have been communicated to Mr Ashley. The regional chairman then spoke of a system – that was clearly not working – which involved the environment health department in the region providing the authorities with daily reports on such facilities. One cannot help but wonder how many days passed where no report was made and how many have to be missed before those in authority question the lapse and insist on being brought up to speed.
Mr Ashley spoke of new measures being put in place to avoid a recurrence. However, sadly, as residents of Port Kaituma and surrounding areas would be well aware, this has happened before.
In 2004, the government in collaboration with the Caribbean Development Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency spent $9.6 million to build the Port Kaituma mortuary. The building remained just an empty space until November 2011 when the freezer was finally installed. The freezer was purchased by the government and delivered to the community in late July 2011. However, since the building was reportedly not wired to facilitate its functioning, the freezer just sat there until that task was finally undertaken.
It is worth noting here that a freezer is the critical fixture in a mortuary. Without a freezer, a morgue is just a building. Clearly, the chatter, some of it from officials, that the community had a mortuary, was more than a little misleading.
Morgue freezers are usually set to maintain a temperature of between -10 to -20 Celsius (14 to -4 degrees Fahrenheit). During the temporary storage of corpses in mortuaries, these temperatures retard the decomposition process, preserving the bodies by inhibiting the growth of bacteria and preventing the body’s enzymes and chemicals from breaking down the tissues. This preservation allows for the extension of time in which a PME could be performed. However, in general, pathologists agree that autopsies should be done as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the situation in Port Kaituma continued as it had before the $9.6 million building was erected, in fact things were a little worse. When people died, they had to be buried hurriedly. Residents who could not bury their loved ones immediately, for one reason or another, had to buy ice, the cost of which sometimes ran into tens of thousands of dollars, and formalin, to preserve their bodies. In addition, families had reported that the building had just one wooden box in which to store a corpse. If there was more than one death, the other body/bodies were placed on the floor where they were routinely attacked by rodents and subsequently handed over to grieving relatives with parts missing. During this period as well, no one was hired to run, or oversee the mortuary. Hardly surprising though. Who would want that job?
Whoever thought that the woes recounted above came to an end in November 2011, had another thought coming. Not long after – the time is iffy here as residents claimed it was two weeks following the installation and regional authorities asserted that it was not – the freezer failed.
In May 2012, this newspaper was told, with the freezer out of commission, the police had asked the relatives of a person whose death was suspicious to assist with storing the remains (purchasing ice and formalin) until arrangements could be made for a pathologist to fly to Port Kaituma for the PME. Weigh this against the standard operating procedure in a suspicious death in Georgetown, for example, where relatives are sometimes not even allowed to view the corpse, and decide whether to laugh or cry. The freezer was subsequently fixed. However, a month-long blackout in Port Kaituma in 2019, took residents back to the horrible days of corpses rotting as during that period even ice was difficult to obtain.
Given the ignominious history of this morgue, last month’s events should never even have taken place. However, it appears that the mortuary still does not have a single direct employee who is responsible for its day-to-day management. Also, to date, not a peep has been heard from the Ministry of Health which ought to have overall jurisdiction over such a facility. Neither has there been a word from the Guyana Police Force. Considering the fact that the freezer failure tanked two investigations, shouldn’t there have been at least a press release? Also, should the police not be investigating whether the freezer failure was deliberate to cover a crime?
The government is building roads, bridges, schools and houses, throwing carnivals and touting ‘One Guyana’, yet Region One citizens have to fret over whether they will have the opportunity to bury their dead respectfully. This is both horrific and criminal. And this is 2023, or is it?
