As part of plans to decongest public storage facilities in the state, the Akwa Ibom State Government has said it will organize a mass burial for over 200 abandoned bodies deposited in the some morgues in the first quarter of 2017.
The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Dominic Ukpong, revealed this in Uyo on Thursday while defending the 2017 budget of his ministry.
He added that the abandoned corpses were to be evacuated from the mortuary at Ikot Okoro General Hospital, Oruk Anam Local Government Area of the state.
Ukpong added that the impending exercise was intended to complement what his ministry did at the Immanuel General Hospital, Eket LGA a year ago.
Ukpong, who was accompanied by the Permanent Secretary in his ministry, Mr. Bassey Attih; Director of Medical Services, Dr. Martin Akpan, and that of the Public Health, Dr. Godwin Ebuk, and other directors to the budget defence, stated that almost all public hospitals where mortuary services were provided in the state were overloaded with abandoned corpses.
“As you may be aware, we have a tradition that when a chief or the head of a family dies, demands will be made to the deceased family to the extent of exposing them to place their lands for sale and this will last for between two and three years thereby overstretching our mortuaries with abandoned corpses,” he said.
Mass burial, he said, was the only avenue of decongesting public mortuaries of abandoned corpses to enable people with good burial planning to patronise their services in the state.
Ukpong used the forum to ask for financial provision from the state government to aid emergency response services in the state.
According to him, financial provision was necessary to enable health officials to respond promptly to emergency situations in any part of the state.