Minister hears horror tales about mortuary

Mbeya. A mortuary attendant at Mbeya Referral Hospital has said he would dump on the floor the body of the Health and Social Welfare deputy minister Seif Rashid (pictured) if he died in Mbeya.

Mr Eugine Vurugu said this during a meeting between the minister and the hospital’s workers. He spoke when workers were given an opportunity to either ask questions or give suggestions.

Mr Vurugu said due to inadequate facilities at the hospital, they were forced to put bodies in the single refrigerator in turns, whereby one body was placed for several hours before it was taken out and another put in its place.

“Even as we are talking, if you die today, there’s nowhere to keep you. You will be kept on the floor, waiting for another corpse to freeze and thereafter you will be put in the refrigerator after the other body is taken out,’’ the attendant told a shocked Dr Rashid.

“I urge the government to make every effort to improve the unit in the hospital to address the issue of bodies decomposing in the mortuary,” Mr Vurugu added.

Mr Vurugu’s remarks contradicted what the hospital’s director, Mr Humphrey Kiwelu, said in his report to Dr Rashid.

Mr Kiwelu earlier told the deputy minister that the hospital had taken a number of measures to improve the quality of its services.

These included the setting up of a laboratory of international standards, whose tests results were accepted globally, including in the USA and UK.

In his address, Dr Rashid told the hospital’s management to identify priorities in addressing challenges encountered by the hospital.

He said the hospital had increased its internal revenues from the former Sh60 million to Sh300 million monthly, adding that the funds should be used to purchase equipment and improve workers’ welfare.