Ga West Municipal Hospital begs government for mortuary

The managers of the Ga West Municipal Hospital in the Greater Accra Region, is asking government for the construction of a mortuary for the hospital facility.

Management of the hospital says the absence of a hospital mortuary makes it difficult for the facility to conveniently conduct further critical tests or autopsies on deceased persons to ascertain the cause of their deaths.

Addressing the media after a stakeholder meeting with chiefs and elders of the Ga West Municipality, the Municipal Director for the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Margaretta Gloria Chandi, said the hospital is taking up big risks in transporting dead bodies to other morgues when the cause of death has not been determined, especially while the country is still trying to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have a lot of accident cases coming in and a lot of brought-in deaths as well. And with the advent of the coronavirus disease, if somebody comes in there, you don’t know what killed them. So moving the body further is a risk. Not only with COVID-19 but with other communicable diseases as well.”

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) Municipal Director further stated that the provision of a mortuary facility will help the hospital to quickly ascertain the cause of death in cases where persons brought in are already deceased and how to deal with whatever the outcome might be.

“If we have a mortuary in the hospital, it provides a one-stop-shop for whatever services we need to render. Aside from that, there is also the need to look into some situations that cause the disease, for example, the pathological examination of watching for autopsy or postmortem. If we are not able to do these post-mortems, how would we know what pertains to our society? When we give the bodies to people to take to other morgues for post-mortem, they will go and bury the dead without telling anybody anything and nobody is there to follow up on it,” she stated.