Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) mortuary built pre-independence to contain 60 bodies from a population of 200,000 and meant for bodies coming out of the General hospital, is now overcrowded with over 300 bodies.
In an interview with the Chief Executive Officer of the PMGH, Dr Paki Molumi, he said many of the bodies come from outside the hospital care, which could be accommodated in an outside facility but over the years Port Moresby General Hospital has taken on that responsibility because there has not been a public mortuary built.
Dr. Molumi said those deaths that occurred outside of the hospital were the responsibility of the city authority.
“Over the last 40 plus years, PMGH has taken on that responsibility and now the population has increased to over a million, we are receiving at least 10 to 15 bodies per day. Our hospital deaths are about six, the rest are coming from outside so we have to accommodate the bodies that are coming from outside as well as deaths within the hospital.
Dr. Molumi explained that the current containers are not meant to stock bodies.
“Therefore, in a 40ft container, you expect to store 20 bodies but end up storing more than 40 bodies. Then the cooler compressor blew up because it had to cool up more. To fix that we brought in more containers, and we try to dispose of the bodies through mass burials because relatives do not claim their bodies. Instead, they forget about them,” he says.
Even mass burials are both time-consuming and expensive. It takes about two months for the hospital to make all the arrangements for mass burial. One process of mass burial costs around K80,000, which is about a million in a year.
However, out of around 600 bodies, they can only bury 50 or 60 in one mass burial. They have to do more to improve the situation.
“That’s why we have reached out to the Indonesian government through a proposal, so we’re putting up a USD$15million for two projects; it’s up to K60 million for two projects, one intensive care unit, a 20-bed ICU and the mortuary,” Dr Molumi said.
He said a feasibility study has been completed and is now in the design stage.
“So we’re looking at storage of over 500 bodies, cremation facilities to cremate bodies rather than continue to have mass burials.
“We are putting embalming facility, we are putting up forensic medicine facilities so that we can do post mortems and determine the cause of deaths for those bodies that come in and also funeral services.
So it’s going be a modern complex facility hopefully before 2030 we could have that modern mortuary.” Dr. Molumi added.
In the meantime, to manage the bodies that are coming in, there is work that is in progress, to remove all the existing containers to give way for this new development.
The hospital is now ordering modular mortuary containers, which are tailor-made. The bodies will then be transferred there to create space for new development that is planned.
“Moving forward to April we’re going to put a process in place, so that once you put in a body you’ll be able to sign, within 14 days if you don’t pick the body, it will automatically become an unclaimed body. That policy is in draft; it’s been prepared, and it will go through the board in its first meeting of this year,” Dr. Molumi said.